


Consequence

by Renega



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-03 07:00:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17279282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renega/pseuds/Renega
Summary: Hermione Granger is a top legal aid at the Ministry for Magic with a bright future ahead of her, until she's arrested for a crime. Worse still, she's guilty as sin. Justice has never been the MoM's strength, and now she's a prisoner of the Wizarding World's most infamous former criminal. Also: unapologetically fluffy.





	1. Part 1: Justice

The pounding began exactly at 10:48 on a Tuesday morning. He didn’t open the door immediately, but he did glance up at the clock. The potion was at a critical stage, however, and he continued to add the lacewings one at a time, his fingers hovering over the cauldron and his head bent to inspect the results. Create in order to deconstruct; it was a method he favored and used frequently.

At 10:52, when the potion was beginning to catalyze, the pounding intensified. He scattered the last of the lacewings across the surface of the brew and stirred twice, counterclockwise, and then once in the opposite direction. Only then did he turn and remove the wards on the door, opening it with a flick of his wand. He saw a flash of black and green as it swung open, and he turned back to his workbench, wiping his palms on a flannel. “Bloody hell Potter, what do you want now?”

“Severus,” the boy choked, and he spun back. If Potter wasn’t calling him Snape, something was wrong – aside from the terror and fear and frustration in his voice. His pupils had contracted to show dark flecks amid the green, and there were blue circles under his eyes. “Haven’t you heard?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Heard what?”

A hand came up, raking through the hair, and it broke the illusion. Sometimes Harry looked so much like Lily that he could almost forget that he was Potter senior’s son as well, but the messy hair and the hand raking and the way his shoulders straightened were pure James. It was a balancing act; if he stopped seeing Lily, he detested the boy almost as much as the sire. If he started seeing her too much, he began to feel as if he and Potter had become chums, and that was revolting. He preferred to perch somewhere in the middle.

“Hermione. She’s been…” Potter took a deep breath, and he felt a flash of something between anger and panic. Anger that somehow they’d gotten themselves into another mess, and panic that perhaps eventually their luck would run out. Might already have run out. Damn Granger… “She’s been arrested.”

“Pardon?” He was sure he hadn’t heard correctly. He thought Potter said arrested, but they were talking of Granger just a moment before, and surely the Deputy Head of Magical Creatures – Shacklebolt’s little ingénue – wouldn’t have done anything criminal. She was swotty and stroppy and brash, but she wasn’t a lawbreaker. And then he remembered the tail, and the Centaurs, and a hundred other things she’d done in flagrant violation of the rules and in the name of expediency.

“She’s being held – we extradited her by Portkey this morning.”

She’d been overseas? He hadn’t noticed – but then he rarely left his lab except to attend staff meetings, and she only rarely came down to visit him, always in Potter’s wake. He waved his hand. “A technicality, no doubt. What is the alleged crime?”

Potter sighed loudly, walked across the room, and flopped onto the stool next to the shelves. “Memory charms. She was in Australia, and they’re…it’s serious. Kingsley had to guarantee charges would be filed before they would agree to release her into our custody and I’m...they won’t let me see her.”

He nodded, sifting through the tidbits of information he had. Memory charms – that could be anything. Australia – Australia. “She was visiting her parents?”

“Sort of,” Potter replied, burying his head in the wide sleeves of his Auror’s robes. “Yes, it’s just…they still don’t know they’re her parents. She was trying to restore their memories and I think something must have gone wrong.”

That made no sense. “What do you mean? I was under the impression that she goes to see them rather frequently.”

A nod, head still buried. Potter looked as if all the fight had gone out of him, and it wasn’t a thing he was used to seeing. “She’s always gone to have her teeth cleaned. This year, she decided to try and fix it.”

“Fix what, exactly?”

“They didn’t immigrate. Hermione sent them there. But she…” Potter had trailed off, some kind of thousand yard stare taking over his features.

“Get on with it!” He’d taken two steps forward and splayed his hands on the bench, bending over Potter.

“She erased all their memories. Completely.”

“Yesterday?” If it were caught early, an accident of that magnitude, it could probably be corrected. And he was pleased that Potter had turned to him, because it showed a great deal of well-justified faith in his expertise. He wondered if the parents had been transferred to St. Mungo’s yet.

Potter shook his head and then raised it. “Seven years ago.”

Bloody hell. And she’d tried to reverse it after that much time…was she mad? “Why – why on _earth_ – would she have done that?”

Potters eyes slid away as if there was something he was trying to hide. Another shake. “You’ll have to ask her.”

Seven years – even he couldn’t help. There was nothing that could be done for the girl or her parents. Severus turned back to his potion, stirring it quickly. “Rather difficult when she’s in a holding cell.”

“Right. Right. That’s why…Ineedyoutogetherout.”

“Stop mumbling, Potter.”

“Sorry, I – I need you to get her out."

He snorted; it was something between a laugh and an exclamation of disbelief. “Ludicrous. If you can’t get her out, I certainly can’t.”

Potter tapped his fingers on the table. “You’re a member of MLE, you’re not close enough for it be considered a conflict of interest, and you’re powerful enough to take her on and win. Kingsley just said you’re the only person he’ll consider releasing her to.”

Severus stared at him, the stir rod going slack in his hands as he tilted his head and considered Potter’s plea. It was dangerous – it would likely be disastrous. They’d be like gasoline and fire, he and Granger.

Potter extended a hand, clenching it as if he wanted to grasp hold of his sleeve and beg. He took a step back so that physical contact wouldn’t be possible and stared down his nose.

“Please? Please help her. She won’t even see me.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“That too.”

Potter looked down at the table, breathing deeply, trying to get a rein on his emotions. Severus was glad to see it; time was the boy probably would’ve tried to force him at wand point down to the cells to retrieve the errant girl. The man drew himself up in the stool and looked him square in the face. “I won’t turn my back on my best friend and I need your help.”

Potter was as manipulative as the dotty old pouf had been, and as shamelessly blunt about it. There was no attempt to soften the appeal, no attempt to seduce him into agreement, just the double-edged blade of guilt and duty sunk deep beneath his shoulders. He twisted as if the pin were more than metaphorical; he ought to let the girl rot, just to spite them all. He drew the rod from the cauldron, cast a stasis spell, and shrugged on his robe. “I assume the Minister will agree to see me?”

Potter smiled and mussed his hair again, nodding. “Thank you.”

“Bugger off. And do something about your hair. You look ridiculous.”

 

\|/

Sometimes the guilt was more than she could bear. She had sent them away, robbed them of their identities and their memories and their dreams. She had done it keep them safe – except when had she started to see herself as the adult and them as the children to be protected and coddled? No matter her justifications – they were alive, after all, in the physical sense – for the act itself, the sheer hubris of it all frightened her. She had betrayed them. She had lied to them, and in some sense murdered them.

But all for the greater good.

She’d been willing to fight and die for something she believed in, but she hadn’t admitted their right to make the same decision. She had treated them as children, too ignorant to know what was really good for them as it related to the magical world. But she hadn’t tried to teach them; she’d taken their lack of understanding as a rejection, and pushed them away. Until one day she’d cut the cord completely and sent them away.

Her family. Her parents. And they were lost to her now, completely, and her crimes had finally caught up with her.

She had been trying to fix her mistakes, to make amends, and instead she had only compounded the severity of the betrayal. In the law’s eyes – which did not recognize Wendell and Monica Wilkins as being kith and kin to Hermione Granger – she had broken the Statute of Secrecy, stupefied her Muggle dentists, and attempted to perform an unforgiveable on them once they were incapacitated. She’d known she was breaking the law the moment she’d lifted her wand – she just hadn’t expected to be caught. There was nothing in her visa that said they were monitoring the spells she cast.

Kingsley had been to see her, disappointment etched on his features. He’d spoken to her gently as he’d laid out the charges against her, and her rights under the law, and her suspension from her job while she awaited trial. He’d been very kind when he told her frankly that her reputation might be enough to spare her Azkaban, but that her career wouldn’t survive the scandal. She’d wanted to cry, not because her dreams had shattered beneath her but because she had let them all down. They believed in her, and she’d proven their faith misplaced.

She didn’t want to see Harry, had refused when Kingsley asked. Harry would justify her crimes, exonerate her immediately in his own mind and promise that it would all be worked out soon, and the worst part was that he’d really believe it. She didn’t want to explain to Harry that sometimes intentions didn’t matter and mistakes couldn’t be swept under the rug.

“We’ll see if we can find you someone to stay with. I’m afraid Harry and the Weasleys are out of the question.”

That’s what Kingsley had said. She hoped he wouldn’t find anyone to take her; she’d rather remain in the cell than go home with a stranger, her magic bound and her wand surrendered.

Yet she knew even now that she was fortunate. Another witch wouldn’t have been extradited immediately and visited by the Minister of Magic. Another witch wouldn’t be ensconced in a cell that had been transfigured into a study, with bookshelves lining the walls and a chaise where she could sleep or read or think or cry.

Her eyes swam with tears so constantly that she knew there would be no reading tonight. She wouldn’t be able to see the words on the page.

She was breaking, breaking. She had tried so hard to do what was right, what was just, what was good, but she had failed.

She heard footsteps at the door, and she swiped her sleeve quickly across her eyes, pushing herself into a sitting position just as it opened.

She blinked, sure that she was staring at an apparition, an illusion, a mirage.

Snape was standing in the doorway, her handbag held awkwardly in a tight grip.

She didn’t have to say a word, because he knew. She could see it in his eyes, which were gentle and kind as they flickered around the room. His lip curled up in distaste. “I see Shacklebolt attempted to make you comfortable.”

She shrugged, and then the weight settled back over her and she felt the tears begin to prick her eyes. She swallowed and turned her face away from him, knowing that she hid nothing and that the gesture revealed her shame.

But he understood that too. With a flick of his wand, he let down the Apparition wards, and his footsteps were slow and even as he approached her. He said not a word as he wound her arm around his and then she felt the pull and the crack and they were standing in the hallway of what she supposed was Spinner’s End. It was a crowded space so small that she clung to him not so much for support as out of necessity. With another flick he opened a door and pushed her into a bedroom. It was neat and tidy, if small, and the single bed looked comfortable.

She wanted to sleep as much as anything.

He left her there, standing in the middle of the room staring longingly at the bed. And then suddenly he was there again with a vial of Dreamless Sleep and a cup of tea, and she accepted both with a gratitude that was profound and silent.

He seemed to understand everything. His hands were gentle as they pushed her toward the bed, and she didn’t hear him leave or close the door.

 

\|/

He rubbed his hand over his face and sighed again, and then returned to scratching the cat behind its ears. The claws sank and retracted, sank and retracted, and on some level he enjoyed the pain he endured while the beast showed its pleasure. He didn’t have a clue what to do with the girl upstairs, the bushy-headed goldilocks in his bed.

But he knew what it was to fall to your knees in remorse over your mistakes, and he knew enough about being broken to know that she’d been shattered. Her sanctimonious superiority was gone, her pride in tatters.

He tried to do the opposite of what Dumbledore had done for him, and so far it seemed to be holding up well as a strategy.

He’d promised Shacklebolt no more than a week. He would keep the girl for a week, and attempt to steady her enough to see that she was upright. A week was enough time to find a suitable solution, at least for the duration of the trial. He had only been held for a week the first time around, but it had been the worst week of his life. The second he’d still been sequestered at St. Mungo’s, not yet even fully capable of understanding that elsewhere his trial proceeded without him.

It was, he thought, going to be a very long week. They were effectively trapped; he’d been told to work from home, do what research he could in his personal lab. He’d been cautioned to set enchantments on his house, to secure it so that she couldn’t escape. It was just as surely a prison as the holding cell at the Ministry, or a tower room in Azkaban.

No prison could be worse than the one she was building herself. Sometimes Dementors weren’t necessary at all, and a person could create a hell in their own mind. He knew well enough that he’d never seen Hermione Granger break until tonight. If she’d been defiant, if she’d made excuses, he would have turned on his heel and left her in that cell, Potter and Shacklebolt be damned. But she hadn’t; she’d clung to him as if he could save her from drowning, as he’d once clung to Albus.

Regrets and recriminations were worthless. Guilt was a bitter pill and a harsh yoke.

He knew.

 

\|/

It was the bright light that woke her and she blinked quickly, burrowing deeper into the down cover and the soft sheets and pulling a pillow over her head. Her mouth was dry and her eyes itched, and she felt drained and boneless.

The pillow jerked from under her face with a harsh snap, and it thudded against the wall and slid to the floor. “Get up, Miss Granger. It’s past ten.”

She blinked again as the dark shape above her coalesced into a familiar visage. He was scowling down at her, his lips thin and his brow slanted down across his forehead, exposing the deep line between his eyes. “Snape, what -?”

She stopped immediately as the day before came back to her. An experiment gone wrong; the Australian Aurors arriving in the clinic moments after she’d cast the spell, before she could even begin to sort through their minds. The cuff around her wrist, the cell, the Portkey. Another cell. A conversation with Kingsley.

She groaned. “Sorry.”

“You should be. The eggs are cold and the coffee’s turned to sludge, but I saved you a bit of both. You have fifteen minutes to shower and meet me in the kitchen.” He tossed a trunk onto the floor by the bed and waved his wand to enlarge it. “Mrs. Potter delivered some of your personal effects. You’d best hope she selected well.”

She felt a rush of helpless yearning and frustration, and the tears pricked her eyes again. She wasn’t sure how she had any moisture left; she felt as dry and brittle as old parchment. “Ginny was here?”

“You’re not permitted to see her. It seems I’m to be your sole companion for the immediate future.”

She nodded. In any other circumstances, she would have regarded the prospect of being trapped in Snape’s house at his mercy with horror, but somehow the thought that no one else would see her like this was comforting.

“Why are you helping me, sir?” He didn’t seem to like her – he never had. But then he didn’t seem to like anyone, really, even the people who formed his immediate circle. Certainly he never seemed to do anything but snipe at Harry and Kingsley and even Minerva, although the fact that he tolerated their company was something of an admission, just as the fact that he was tolerating hers spoke more loudly than his words.

He scowled, his long fingers clenching around his forearms as he brought his arms to rest across his chest. “If you’re as clever as I’m told, you’ll work it out for yourself. Fifteen minutes.”

And then he was gone. She showered mechanically, wincing as she squirted a bit of astringent shampoo – which smelled like tea tree oil and something chemical – into her palm. She thought about drying herself – with a start she realized that she couldn’t use her wand and reached for one of the flannels folded on the shelf above the sink – and seeing if Ginny had packed her toiletries, but in another moment of reflection she realized that she wasn’t going to see anyone but Snape and it hardly mattered if his harsh shampoo turned her into a walking shrub. She worked it into her hair, finished her shower, and dried herself off, padding back through the bedroom to her trunk. She put on the first clothes she found, a ratty vest and a pair of jeans, and slipped her feet into a pair of ballet flats. She rubbed her hair half-dry, hung the flannel on the rack in the bathroom, and headed for the kitchen.

It wasn’t a large house, just a terrace with two up and two down and a basement that was only possible with the aid of magic. There was a door in the bathroom that led to the other bedroom – his bedroom – and the hallway was just a small landing with scarcely enough space for a single person to loiter. The stairs were steep and wood and they creaked as she walked down them to the sitting area.

She hadn’t been in his home for six years, since he’d been comatose in the Magical Creatures ward at St. Mungo’s and Harry had been sent to fetch his notes on antivenin. Then, the sitting room had been dark and cluttered and uncomfortable, the chairs rigid and unyielding and the wallpaper faded and peeling. The books and the clutter were still present, but at some point he’d whitewashed the walls and replaced the rickety chairs with a couple of monstrous zero-gravity contraptions upholstered in tan leather. There was a music system in the corner, but no telly, and there were piles of books and papers everywhere.

Even Harry had never been invited to Spinner’s End, and Snape had only darkened the door of Grimmauld Place once since the end of the war. Her curiosity was stronger than her grief and exhaustion, and she took a few moments to study the room. It was, all in all, a simple and inviting space, and certainly more to her taste than the overdone monstrosity Kingsley had created in her cell yesterday.

Snape was in the kitchen, sitting at a small table and reading a copy of the Prophet, sipping a cup of coffee. There was an empty place setting at the table, a full mug and a plate of eggs and bacon. She sat down and took a long sip of the coffee, and then picked up a strip of bacon and pushed the eggs around the plate with the crispy end. “Did it make the paper yet?”

He lowered the newspaper and studied her, his lips pursing. “No. Don’t play with your food, Granger. Eat.” And then he hid his face again to read.

She picked up the fork and scooped up a bit of the eggs, depositing them on her tongue. They tasted like ash, and she followed them with bitter coffee and cold bacon. The silence was broken only by the white noise of her cutlery scraping against the pottery, the sounds of her chewing, and his grunts and page turning. After she’d eaten a few slow bites, she set down the fork and looked up at him.

“Will they offer me a plea?”

“I suppose.”

“What do you think it will be?”

He flung the paper onto the table’s surface and glared at her. “How should I know?”

Dammit. She was crying again. “I just thought – you’re very clever, sir.”

His face softened a bit, and he leaned forward. “Does it matter what they offer you? Whatever it is, it will be both too much and not enough in your eyes. You will receive neither true mercy nor justice.”

She heard the truth in his words as soon as he spoke them. She looked around the small kitchen. It was neat and well-kept, the linoleum polished and the countertops scrubbed. She looked at the man across from her, who sat straight in his white linen shirt and his black jeans, his hair – lightened by a few streaks of iron-grey – falling limply around his face. She looked at his arm, covered by his shirt, and wondered about the mark the fabric hid.

He was still not a handsome man, nor a genial one. The end of the war had changed neither his aspect nor his essential personality, yet somehow she understood a little better the weight he’d shouldered.

He shrugged suddenly, and pushed his chair back from the table. “Don’t look to them for comfort. What matters is that you find a way to live with yourself.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, desperate to keep him there with her. She didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to be trapped with nothing but her own thoughts.

“To my lab. My work didn’t end just because I’ve been saddled with you as well.”

“May I help?”

He sighed, and she thought it was just a shade too emphatic to be genuine. “Possibly, if you do as I ask and otherwise stay out of my way.”

She followed him down another set of stairs to his basement laboratory. Parts of it – the benches, the jars of pickled creatures – looked to have been transported directly out of his office at Hogwarts. His desk was shoved in the corner and so piled with papers that she couldn’t see the surface, but she suspected he’d brought that along as well.

It felt like a lifetime ago that she’d sat on one of the hard stools at a potion’s bench, although in reality it had only been five years. But Harry and Ron hadn’t been with her then, and Slughorn had been absent-minded at best. Her N.E.W.T. year had passed in a haze.

She’d broken up and then mended things with Ron four or five times before he’d finally told her that being together felt too much like work. Ginny had been Head Girl. Hermione had been the war heroine, shoved off to the side because she was too old to be a student and too young to be a peer with her professors. That had been a lonely year for her.

It must’ve been a lonely year for him too, stuck at Spinner’s End with only Kreacher to care for him – if one could call the bossy elf’s demands care. But somehow, by the time she’d left Hogwarts to start her job in Magical Creatures, Harry had wormed his way in and claimed that he and Snape were – if not friends – then at least allies and colleagues. Ron wanted no part of it, but Harry and Neville were frequent visitors to his lab in the M.L.E. division, and even Luna and Ginny had been known to drop in for lunch on occasion. Hermione had rarely been invited to join them, and she’d tried not to resent the exclusion.

He was preparing a cauldron, his efficient hands performing the tasks by rote as he muttered notes to a dictoquill. She watched him with a mixture of awe and gratitude as he chopped ingredients and formed them into little piles, his wand dancing in his left hand to summon jars and replace them as his right held the knife with a practiced grace. He smirked slightly as he chopped a flobberworm diagonally, the blade tapping a staccato rhythm as it quartered the wiggling creature.

“You enjoy this,” she breathed, and she heard his knife clatter to a stop. He didn’t turn to face her, but speared another worm with the tip and repeated his quick dissection. She clarified. “Your work.”

He glanced up at her from under his lashes, set down his knife and his wand, and dragged a stool to the opposite side of the bench she was sitting at. He leaned back against it and folded his arms across his chest. “I should hope so.”

He wasn’t unhappy, she realized suddenly. Not anymore. His eyes were warmer and the planes of his face were softer. He looked healthier, and while he was still thin his cheekbones and jaw didn’t jut out at such harsh angles.

“How do you move past it?”

“You don’t,” he answered evenly, and she was grateful for his honesty. “You accept that there is never perfect justice in this world, and you do your best to make amends for your crimes.”

She nodded, and she felt the need to tell him, to make him understand. To hear his perspective, which suddenly seemed to be the only one that mattered. “It was something Tonks said. She told me if the Ministry fell they’d be at risk – that I had to tell my parents what was happening. She offered to come with me – they’d hid her dad’s parents in Ireland, and she had…experience, I guess. But I’d lied to them for so long, telling them that everything was fine and things at school were lovely and no, they didn’t need to come with me to pick up my school supplies or to see me off at the platform…I didn’t know how to tell them that there was a war going on and that I was right in the middle of it and I’d hid it from them. They were so reluctant to let me go in the first place. They didn’t understand why I couldn’t have tutors in magic and sit my A-levels. They wanted me to do both, and I knew that…what sort of parent would let their teenage daughter fight a war they couldn’t comprehend against an ideology they couldn’t understand? I couldn’t tell them, so I…I thought I was protecting them. I altered their memories, their documents, their bank accounts. I sent them to Australia and I told myself I was saving their lives.”

He sighed and ran a hand over his face when she trailed off, shaking his head slightly. “Dora was right. Yaxley paid a visit to your home immediately once the Ministry fell. You shouldn’t have lied to them, but you already know that.”

“I just thought I could fix –“

“Stop. You wanted them back. You wanted their forgiveness and their absolution, but did you ever once think of what that would cost them?”

“No.”

“You suppose that they would be better off knowing they had a daughter who respected them that little and an entire life they’d been denied for the better part of a decade?”

His words were harsh, but his voice was soft and strangely gentle. She leaned toward him, and then rested her chin on her hands. “I didn’t…I didn’t think, I suppose. I missed them terribly, and I thought that…they’d miss me too, if they knew. But they don’t.”

He rose from the stool, returned to his work. “Withholding information, treating people as if they can’t be trusted to draw their own conclusions. Dumbledore did the same. Rules and laws never applied to him so long as he believed in the purity of his own intentions.”

“Did you hate him for it?” She realized how impertinent the question sounded as soon as it left her lips, and she ducked her head to hide her eyes, waiting for a snappish response and a set-down.

“Sometimes. Never so much as I hated myself for looking to him for absolution that wasn’t his to grant.”

“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, unsure where the impulse had come from. She saw his lips curl up in a smile as he dropped the worms into the base and adjusted the heat on his cauldron, and she thought that he might be mocking her but she didn’t care.

“For what?” he asked blandly.

“For ever –“ she began, and she realized how weak the apology was as soon as she started to articulate it. “For lying to you. For setting you on fire, for knocking you out, for sneaking around and all the stupid things we did. For disrespecting you.”

“Apology accepted.”

She smiled despite herself. “So it’s that simple, is it? I apologize and I’m forgiven.”

“It’s rarely that simple, but I am hardly in a position to be unforgiving.”

“Fair enough.” She studied the wood of the table, digging the side of her thumb into a gash on the surface. “Are you going to apologize to me?”

She thought he snickered, but his head was bent so low over the cauldron she couldn’t be sure. He raised it then and looked at her, his lips quirking. “For what? My teaching methods?”

“For being cruel,” she huffed. Was he totally oblivious?

“I don’t apologize for being what I am,” he answered. “Only the wrongs I’ve done.”

“But you called me an insufferable know-it-all, and a fool, and…” she stopped. Much quieter, she finished, “Nothing I didn’t deserve.”

He nodded. “I was ill-suited to being a teacher. Albus encouraged your disrespect and your paranoia and your arrogance. You were taught to think yourself above the rules, and I was forced to endure the results of it. None of us were entirely to blame.”

“We were at war, Severus.” She said his name without thinking, and she froze at the same moment he did. His shoulders tensed, and then relaxed just as quickly. She held her breath.

“There’s no such thing as a just war.”

“So we shouldn’t have fought, is that what you’re saying?”

He pushed himself back and turned, striding to her table in three long steps and leaning over so that his face was uncomfortably close. His eyes narrowed and she could see the lines around them deepen. “I’m saying that you do your best to do the thing in front of you with the least amount of damage, and that’s all you can do. Because if you start believing that you know what justice means, and it’s your duty to dispense it, you’ve already failed.”

“Do you think I’m a horrible person?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

He stopped glowering, and his jaw relaxed. She felt his stare graze over her face, and she fixed her eyes on his forehead and submitted to his scrutiny. And then he tilted his head, and she felt exposed, as if all of her pain was reflected in his own face and all of her shame was laid bare. “We are all just beggars at the feast.”

She felt the tears coming again, and she swiped at them with the back of her sleeve. “Why did you choose to serve him?”

“Because he wasn’t a hypocrite,” he answered steadily, misconstruing the question.

“I meant Dumbledore.”

He rocked back, and he seemed disinclined to answer as he retreated from her personal space. The intensity drained from him, and she saw something that looked like regret flicker over his features, but then he straightened and his voice was level when he replied, “I was too much a coward to confess what I’d done to Lily, so I begged someone else to right it. I trusted him to save her, but he was as much a coward and fool as the rest of us.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to accept it. It seemed like he lived in a world without good and evil, in some sort of relativistic grey area where all were equally mean and stupid and incompetent, but she knew that she was willfully misunderstanding him. He did believe in things like honor and justice and courage or he wouldn’t have acted as he did. And yet he seemed reluctant to admit it, almost as if admitting it was a danger.

“I’ve ruined my life,” she said bluntly, as he turned back to his cauldron yet again.

“You’ve besmirched your reputation and probably ended your career. Your life is hardly over – Kingsley will sacrifice his own position before he’ll allow you to be kissed. Given the extenuating circumstances, I doubt you’ll even be sent to Azkaban.”

She didn’t correct him, she didn’t inform him that what she’d meant was she’d ruined her career and that was the same as saying she’d ruined her life. Somehow she thought it wouldn’t come out the way she meant it, or possibly that it was stupid in the first place.

“You’ll find, much to your chagrin perhaps, that life goes on.”

“Were you sorry that you lived?”

“The first time, yes. The second I was just sorry that others did not.” He tapped his stirring rod on the side of the cauldron and then set it on the table. “Come – this needs an hour or so to thicken.”

“Where are we going?” She asked, following after him dutifully as he mounted the stairs. He ignored her question and headed for the kitchen, taking down an electric teapot, a canister of Earl Grey, and a box of chocolate biscuits. He slid the box across the counter toward her and busied himself with the teapot and the faucet. She nibbled at one of the biscuits, watching him. “You don’t use magic to warm your water?”

“I don’t use my wand at all except in the lab,” he answered, and she looked around the kitchen again. It was clean – muggle clean. The way her mother cleaned things, with soaps and rags and polish. It was a different sort of clean, and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before. He’d been raised in the Muggle world, as she had.

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t been a wizard?” She asked, and what she meant was – sometimes I wish I wasn’t a witch. It would have been easier that way. She’d have been ignorant of all it; she would never have found herself in the middle of a war, or been pulled away from her family, or betrayed her parents.

“My mistakes would have been different, but I’d still have made them.” He poured the water over the leaves and steeped them. She didn’t know what to say. He poured out a cup and slid it across to her. “Milk or sugar?”

“No thank you.” Why was he being so kind? He’d never been kind to her before; she’d always had the impression that he disliked her, or at the very least didn’t give a shit about her one way or the other. She felt like a burden, one he was shouldering with a surprising amount of grace. Was this really the man who’d snarled and snapped at them all?

“You’ve changed,” she said. “You’re not so angry anymore. What happened?”

“You grew up.”

She had a moment to coddle a winding indignation before he smiled, a full grin which showed his awful teeth but transformed his features utterly. It was a sweet, sensitive smile. It was a smile she remembered seeing on a boy in bottle of memories. And there was nothing to do but smile in return, and it felt so good to smile, to be happy, to forget…

And it broke her heart as soon as she remembered.

 

\|/

She was a mess. He had been scrupulously careful to allow her to take her ruminations wherever she needed to take them, and he had been patient with her curiosity and her rude questions. It was the mercy of the fallen – he wouldn’t offer her false platitudes, but he wouldn’t wound someone who was so very fragile intentionally.

So he hadn’t mentioned that she had bags under her eyes or that her hair looked as if a hedgehog had been caught in a bramble. He hadn’t mentioned that perhaps she ought to put on something more appropriate than loungewear and do something useful. He’d let her follow him around like a puppy and interrogate him like a lawyer and he found that despite her actions she had a mature perspective on her situation and a decent enough grasp of ethics.

She’d grown up. He’d felt a similar acknowledgement when Longbottom had faced him without fear, when Potter had apologized for assaulting Draco, when Draco had shown up and asked what he needed to do to make amends. It was the mercy of the fallen, the sole province of those who had floundered and failed and hadn’t run from their failures but faced them and fought them down.

Humility was the one thing Granger had obviously lacked. He wished, for her sake, that it hadn’t come to this, but there was a new wisdom in her eyes, and it forced him to accord her the same amount of respect he would any other of his peers. She was clever and creative and courageous and she never turned her back on anyone. She was sympathetic and determined and not afraid to speak her mind, and those were all good qualities. Only her insufferable pride, her absolute faith in her own conclusions and perceptions, the certainty of her moral superiority had made her intolerable.

She was tolerable now, he supposed. He wasn’t finding this as excruciating as he’d anticipated when Potter had been pleading for his help. Entertaining her was only mildly unpleasant.

Until he smiled at her.

At first she smiled back, and she looked younger, more like the Miss Granger he remembered. She was not – had never been – a really pretty girl if you just took her features into account. She had been attractive, though, because she was clever and witty and animated. He was glad to have elicited a smile. It suited her better than brittle stoicism.

And then suddenly her face crumpled in, and there were tears running down her cheeks. She didn’t cry aloud, or sniffle, or whimper. She just stood there and reached out for him blindly, her hand groping over the counter.

He did the opposite of what Albus would have done. He put his arm around her shoulder and guided her into the sitting room. He hooked his foot under one of the ottomans, sliding it against the other to form a sort of bench, and pulled her down beside him. She leaned on his shoulder and her tears were soaking his shirt.

He didn’t know what to say – perhaps there was nothing to say, after all. She was asleep in minutes, and he laid her in one of the chairs and pulled a blanket over her before heading back to his laboratory. A bit of rest wouldn’t do her any harm.

 

\|/

When she woke again it was dark, and it took her a moment to realize where she was and a few more for her eyes to adjust. She was in one of the leather chairs, and there was a thick wool blanket wrapped around her. It smelled like him, she realized. It smelled like the bed upstairs. A cat was curled on her lap; it woke at the same time she did and stretched its legs, jumping from the chair and startling her a bit.

She listened for a moment, hearing the faint sound of music from the basement. He was still down there. She climbed out of the chair and reached for the lamp, fumbling around until she found the switch. She headed upstairs to the bedroom, and paused at her trunk to remove a jumper. She looked around at the rather spare room, then crossed to the closet and opened the door. His clothing hung neatly inside it, and his shoes were precisely arranged on the floor.

She stepped back into the hallway, staring at the door to the second bedroom. It was slightly ajar, and it would be easy to push the door open. The light in the hallway would illuminate the room well enough to see inside it.

But she wouldn’t impinge on his hospitality by disregarding his privacy. She turned off the light and headed for the basement. She found him hovering over a set of cauldrons with his sleeves rolled up and his hair tied back. A CD player sat on the counter; he was listening to Leonard Cohen.

Her mother liked Leonard Cohen too. She tried to push that memory away and concentrate on the man in front of her. He turned a bit to acknowledge her presence, but he was intent on the interplay between the two cauldrons, and he held up a finger to forestall her. She wandered over to the stool and sat on it, propping her elbows on the table. Three songs finished before he grunted, cast a stasis on the potions, and turned to look at her.

“Was it successful? Your experiment.”

“Yes.”

“What is it you do exactly?” she asked, putting off the discussion she’d come down here to have with him. And really, his job wasn’t very well defined and she had wondered at times.

“Forensics,” he answered. “Analyzing and re-creating potions so that we can devise antidotes or approve them for market.”

“That sounds interesting.” And far beyond her abilities. She’d wanted him to acknowledge her as a prodigy because she could follow instructions flawlessly. But she wasn’t truly gifted. Not in the same way he was.

“It’s fascinating. I’m paid to experiment.”

“I slept in your bed last night,” she blurted. “I only just realized – “

He turned away from her, cleaning his stir rods with a flannel and tidying up the discarded ingredients. “Would you have preferred one of the chairs?”

“That’s not the point. I don’t understand why you’re doing this for me.”

“Don’t you?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “Potter asked me to, as did Shacklebolt.”

“But why you? And why did you agree?”

“For one thing, because the Prophet will probably report that you were released into my custody.”

She nodded, puzzled.

“If you read that, would you think it sounded like a pleasant holiday?”

She smiled crookedly. “I suppose everyone will think that I’m locked in your basement and that you’re insulting me ad nauseam whilst I’m forced to clean cauldrons by hand.”

“Not everyone, but the vast majority,” he answered, quirking an eyebrow as if daring her to prove him wrong.

“You really don’t care what they think, do you?”

“No.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You could start by making dinner while I tidy up. You were asleep, and I didn’t have time to stop for lunch.”

She flushed. “I would, but –“

“But what?” He almost looked eager to hear her answer, as if he was waiting for an opportunity to mock her about something relatively harmless. She supposed he probably was; he’d been earnest and kind for a rather long time without cracking, and the effort must have worn him.

“I don’t know how to cook without a wand.”

He quirked his head at her. “Good God. Do you mean you never helped your mother in the kitchen?”

Did that mean he had? She knew nothing about his childhood, she realized, aside from Harry’s allusions to abuse and neglect. “She didn’t cook. We survived on toast and take-away.”

“Then I suppose it’s down to me to teach you.” He stacked his paraphernalia on the corner of the table and headed for the stairs, no doubt expecting her to follow.

So she did.

 

\|/

She’d followed his instructions carefully and managed to cook them a passable dinner without burning the house down, and he’d even gone so far as to damn her efforts with faint praise. She’d reacted to his decree of ‘not terrible’ as if he’d featured her in the culinary section of the Guardian, and it had required an effort on his part not to laugh at her.

Her need to please was her biggest problem. She looked elsewhere for approbation and it made her vulnerable. Weak. She’d probably wanted to please her parents as well, and look where that had got her.

But overall, things seemed to be going well. She’d had a day of rest, and she’d concluded it by accomplishing something, even something so small as managing to feed them. She hadn’t protested when he’d demanded that she take the bedroom, and she’d done as bid and allowed him to do the washing while she went to bed. She’d even stolen his cat; his lap remained bare throughout the night. He assumed she must’ve needed the company more than he did.

The cat also accomplished waking her at a respectable hour. It padded into the kitchen looking for kibble at the same moment he heard the shower turn on upstairs, and she arrived in the kitchen just as he was taking the coffee off the warmer. She sat down at the table and trailed her arm across the cat’s ribs. It continued to eat, but flicked its tail against her wrist.

“What’s her name,” she asked.

“Pardon?” He poured out two cups of coffee, but he didn’t hand her the second one. Instead, he left it on the counter and walked to the table, snapping his paper open and scanning the headlines. After a moment, he heard her get up to retrieve the coffee.

“Your cat. What’s her name?”

“It doesn’t have one.”

“You’re joking. How long have you had her?”

“Four years,” he answered. “It was a gift from Professor McGonagall.” Keep her talking – long enough for him to scan the article. Long enough for him to assess the damage.

“It’s a girl, you know. Your cat doesn’t have a name – that’s mad.”

“It’s a cat, Granger. At best, it keeps the mice away, and I could accomplish as much with a spell. It eats, it sleeps, it tracks litter and hair across the house. If it’s any consolation, I’m sure it thinks of me as ‘the human.’ We cohabitate; that is all.” He could practically hear the steam pouring out of her nostrils, although he continued to read. She was distracted, and he was glad of it.

“She deserves to have somebody love her! What’s wrong with you?”

“I respect the cat, which I daresay it values a great deal more than love. Or would you have me pawn it off on Master Teddy, who would no doubt love it to extinction? I don’t recall any of the real bunnies desiring to have their fur loved off. Daft cow.”

She sputtered, and a few droplets of coffee soaked their way through the paper. “Sorry, did you just allude to the Velveteen Rabbit?”

“It’s vastly superior to Peter Rabbit, at least. I’ve always hoped that Potter would name one of his litter Beatrix, and that our Miss Potter would turn out as dull and insipid as her namesake. Alas, it’s too close to Bellatrix, I suppose, to hold much hope of it.”

She was silent; he hadn’t expected an outright laugh, but he was rather proud of his wit and expected at least a passing acknowledgement. He didn’t lower the paper, though, even though he’d finished the article.

“How bad is it?” She finally asked. Brighter than he’d given her credit for, he supposed.

“Here”, he said, tossing the article down in front of her. “I’ll make us some toast.”

He busied himself with a loaf of pumpernickel and the toaster. He heard the rustle of the paper as she picked it up, but he continued to fiddle at the counter and then went to the fridge for a jar of jam. He took an absurdly long time selecting knives and plates, considering he only owned one incomplete set of dishes and tableware. Finally he heard another rustle as she dropped the paper to the table, and he carried the food over.

“They’re saying I wasn’t in my right mind – that I didn’t know what I was doing. War trauma, Percy said.”

“Yes,” he answered, spreading a bit of the jam across his toast. He took a bite of it, chewing it carefully.

“It isn’t true.”

“It may be believable.”

“That isn’t the point. Justice is supposed to be about finding the truth, isn’t it? Not shoving off responsibility and making things up.”

“This isn’t a question of justice. It’s a question of politics.”

She sat for several minutes, scraping her knife across the toast, deep in thought. He didn’t venture to say anything. He guessed that she was trying to tease out the larger plan.

“They aren’t going to let me testify, are they? They’re going to claim I’m indisposed, tell everyone I’m too sick to take the stand. Let me resign and call it medical, ask me to keep a low profile. And then Harry’s going to find me some out of the way job that he’s dreamt up, and I’ll be expected to lead a quiet life.”

“In essentials,” he answered, around bites of his toast.

“That’s why I’m here,” she accused. He could hear anger in her voice, but he didn’t look up at her. She felt he’d betrayed her. Fair enough – he supposed he had. “I’m not going to do it, Snape. I have principles – I’m not going to go along with such a bald-faced lie in order to save my own skin. Just how guilty were you?”

Ah. There. Of course. He took a sip of his coffee, finally looked up at her, held her gaze. “As guilty as you are. And then some.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “But your intentions…”

“As I said.” He went back to eating his toast.

“Why?”

“Because they care what happens to you, but they can’t afford to have Albus’s methods questioned. Or haven’t you noticed that the Order of the Phoenix has more power than the riddled bastard ever did?”

“That’s ridiculous!”

He set down his knife and leaned across the table. “Kingsley Shacklebolt is what?”

After a moment, she answered. “Minister.”

“Minerva.”

“Headmistress, but – “

“Arthur Weasley.”

“Muggle liaison.”

“Bill Weasley.”

“Gringott’s.”

“Shall I continue?”

She waved her hand, glaring at him. “I won’t lie.”

“They won’t ask you to.” He pushed back his coffee and stretched as he rose. He looked down at her. “It’s your choice, Granger. I’ll take you back today, if you wish it, and you can press for justice to be served. Or you can stay here and make yourself useful while you await mercy to be granted.”

He walked away. He was almost to the basement stairs when he heard her voice from the kitchen. “It isn’t fair.”

He paused, and spoke loud enough to be heard. “Life isn’t.”

And then he closed the door to his laboratory firmly behind him.


	2. Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of 3 (plus a short epilogue)

Harry called him the bravest man he’d ever known. Kingsley called him an asset and friend. Minerva called him a good man, in essentials. Skeeter wavered between Scoundrel and Saint but at the close of her book came down tentatively for the latter.

He believed none of it, in the end, if he ever had, and she wondered if they did either. Certainly Harry and Minerva knew that he could be bitter and vindictive and petty. Clearly Kingsley knew that he was hard to read, and loyal to nothing except his own principles – which he held rather close to the chest, at that. But they valued him, obviously. Even loved him, perhaps.

It must’ve been a bitter pill for him to swallow. It skirted the edge of pity, perhaps even ventured beyond it. He was a proud man, and jealous of his dignity.

It had been that or Azkaban, though, she realized. That or a Dementor’s Kiss. He’d never spoken of his role in the war, but she hadn’t known they’d asked for his silence.

She followed him down to the basement. He was sitting at his desk, reading through a stack of paperwork. He didn’t acknowledge her presence. She looked around the room again, taking in the second-hand potions equipment. They’d given him a laboratory, she realized. They’d given him a chance to start over.

“Are you happy?” What she meant was – will I be happy if I swallow my pride and my principles, or will the guilt eat me alive?

“More than I have any right to be,” he answered, not looking up from his reading. A pair of glasses perched on his prodigious nose, in no danger of sliding down such a sturdy prop. He was ridiculous looking, a thin skeleton of a man with a crooked smile and a face that jutted out at strange angles. He was all lines without curves, with a personality as prickly as his disadvantaged visage. He was a fierce man, one who would protect his loved ones at any cost. She remembered the doe; more than that, she remembered its silence. He was a strange man, a man who kept his own counsel, a solitary man.

He was also alone. She didn’t know if she could be alone anymore; even with her job, she’d longed for her family. Without the Ministry, the hours would drag by interminably. She’d have nothing to do but wallow in self-pity and self-hatred. “Did they ask you what you wanted to do? Or did they just assume…”

He sighed and set his papers down, turning his chair toward her. He steepled his fingers under his chin, and his eyes raked over her. He seemed to be debating with himself, and it took him a while to consider his words. “If we are going to speak as adults, I expect you to act as one.”

She knew she looked disgusted and affronted – the words were like a slap. Except he obviously didn’t mean them to wound; he raised an eyebrow as she took a deep breath, and almost looked amused. So she found that words coming out of her mouth were not ‘fuck off, you bastard’, as she expected, but a more acceptable, “How do you mean?”

“Keep the emotional outbursts to a minimum.” For his sake as much as her own, probably.

It was a fair request. She’d been all over the map the last two days. “All right. I’ll try.”

He nodded. “We’re dealing primarily with Gryffindors, which means logic is not a strength for them.”

Deep breaths. “Are you deliberately trying to provoke me?”

He smiled. “I’m not saying you’re all stupid, but as a broad generalization you rely on instinct rather than reason. If you asked Shacklebolt or Potter if they were devising a strategy, they would deny it. Likewise, they would deny that they did anything of the sort in my case. They are making decisions moment by moment, but since we know what their definition of an acceptable outcome is, we can predict how they will bring it about.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“So to answer your question, no. No one sat me down and had a discussion about my career interests or life plans, and if they had I’d have hexed them to six. Minerva started delivering equipment and ingredients as soon as I was released from St. Mungo’s and said Horace was rearranging the classroom. She asked me to brew supplies for the infirmary, and then Shacklebolt began using me for some of the more complex cases. When enough time had passed and my worth was proven, a job was created. By happy coincidence, it’s one I rather like.”

“I’m glad,” she said sincerely. He deserved a job he liked – deserved to be happy at last. “I just don’t know what I can do. You didn’t like your previous job, but I loved mine. I loved reading all the laws and trying to revise them. I loved working with Wizengamot and the committees. You’re probably right – I’ll have to do something low-profile. I wanted to – I was working toward being the Chief Witch. That was my dream. I don’t have anything I want to do except law.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“That’s pathetic. Do you have any hobbies?”

“I read a lot.”

“Perhaps you could be an archivist.”

“I don’t want to be an archivist.” It sounded so boring. She wanted to make laws, not classify them. “What else?”

He hesitated, rubbing his fingers along the underside of his jaw. “Minerva would be better suited to having this discussion with you.”

She smiled and scooted her stool toward the table. “I got her advice at my leaving. You were a Head – you’ve done this before. Please?”

After a moment, he smiled back. It wasn’t very broad, and it was more of a smirk, but she liked seeing it. It transformed him. “You could write.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s very simple, really. A bit of parchment, a quill – or a biro. Even a computer, if you want to do it quickly.” His delivery was completely deadpan, and she didn’t realize he was mocking her right away. It was the quivering of his lips that gave him away, and she held up two fingers in a rude gesture.

“Berk.”

“Git is the preferred term, but that will do.” He smiled again – this time he teeth showed. He needed dental care. So did she, for that matter, since getting her teeth cleaned now would be a sort of felony or several. Maybe she could find them both a dentist here in Manchester.

“That isn’t what I meant anyhow. Obviously, I know how to write –“

“Do you? I don’t recall you had any sense of brevity whilst I was your tutor.”

She smirked – found herself mimicking his expression, except that she couldn’t raise one eyebrow in that manner he had, and when she tried she felt her entire forehead wrinkle. “Certainly not once I realized it drove you mad. Sir.”

“You don’t expect me to believe you singled me out, do you? I never enjoyed the papers you wrote as Hermione Granger, and I rarely read them, but that was common amongst the staff. Filius favored “meticulous research and clear logic” and the lazier ones used a standard ‘well done’,” he explained.

She wasn’t sure whether she was upset by that or not, but she laughed – perhaps a little nervously. “So you really don’t know whether I write very well or not.”

“Your papers were dreadfully boring, a summary of correlated citations, but well-written. Quite useful as an index, but essentially a brief. I’m sure you were a very competent solicitor.”

“That seems like high praise coming from you!”

“Bit of an insult, actually. Legal briefs are terminally dull and the world doesn’t need more of them. Back to the point, your papers as Potter and Weasley were vastly entertaining.”

“What?” She sat back in the stool, attempting to put an expression on her face that wouldn’t look guilty.

“I can’t begin to describe how delightful it was to read your characterizations of their illogical thought patterns. We were always a bit depressed when you fell out with them and we had to mark their own work.”

She felt herself flushing, embarrassed that she’d been caught but equally as pleased by the praise. “You knew?”

“We weren’t nearly as stupid as you thought us.”

“That’s humiliating – seems like I was the stupid one.”

“Good. Everyone should be a bit embarrassed by the things they got up to in adolescence.”

She bit her lip. There was a comment about Death Eaters on the tip of her tongue, and he probably knew it. But for God’s sake, she wasn’t going to actually say it. And that reminded her of the fact that she had crimes to answer for as well. She sobered – they had somehow veered onto some sort of strange discussion about the past instead of focusing on the issue at hand. “There isn’t a large market for school papers, even if they are sending up Harry and Ron. And it would be wrong to use their celebrity.”

“It wouldn’t be wrong to use your own. You have a gift for mimicking voice. Even your own papers were a sort of parody of a proper schoolgirl.”

That, it seemed, really was a high compliment. He had identified one of her strengths after all. She mulled it over. “I always wanted to write a popular version of Beedle the Bard. The stories are lovely, but they’re rather advanced reading.”

“ _Hogwarts: A History_ could use a revision as well.”

She blew out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding, and the tension in her shoulders gave. The point wasn’t that she would do exactly those things, but that there was a future outside the Ministry. A sort of vision came to mind, misty and strange but with a ring of truth. Sitting in a cozy chair in a cozy room, drinking hot cocoa and writing, surrounded by reference books – but instead of trying to be earnest and competent, she was playing, letting the work form itself. She could see herself in that life. Even if she was alone, she could be happy.

She looked at him in amazement. “You’re right.”

“Of course.” He sounded a little smug, but she was prepared to let that slide. Maybe he had a right to be.

“Harry really likes you,” she said suddenly.

“Unfortunately.”

“I’m glad I’m getting this opportunity. That’s what I mean. You’re – well, nice isn’t the right word, is it? But you’re a good friend, even when you don’t really like someone.”

He pursed his lips a bit dramatically. “I don’t despise Potter.”

“I know. I meant me. But for what it’s worth, I’m really thankful to be here right now. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise.”

“You’d have managed,” he replied, and there was a tautness to his jaw that made her think if she forced him to acknowledge her gratitude it wouldn’t end well.

“So anyway, what potion are we making today?”

He snorted, and his amusement made her happy. “I am writing on a report on yesterday’s experiment while you continue to practice your culinary skills. But first we are going to the market – I don’t have enough on hand to feed two of us for much longer.”

She blinked quickly. “I’m allowed to leave the house?”

“If I don’t take you along, I risk coming back to find you’ve nicked the silver and absconded.”

She found herself laughing lightly – she wondered how many vague allusions he’d made to muggles over the years that she hadn’t noticed. “You’re hardly a priest – and I’d venture to guess you haven’t got any family silver.”

He smirked. “Potions ingredients, then; that’s already on your formal record. Now, go upstairs and find yourself something to read while I shower and change.”

She followed him up the first set of stairs, and wandered into the sitting room while he continued up. The bookshelves were floor to ceiling on two walls, and many of the titles were old and well-used, the spines cracked and the parchment dry or the paper brittle. There seemed to be no organization to how they were shelved, but she knew that it was probably deceptive. He would have some sort of system, even if it was arcane and deeply personal. Most of the titles were magical, but there were two full shelves of muggle books all grouped together. Even those were an eclectic mix – Auden and Hawking, Hugo and Swift. His reading tastes were broad and varied.

She took down a battered paperback copy of North and South. It looked old and like it had been read within an inch of its life, and she was surprised – it didn’t seem like it would be his taste in literature. She flipped open the cover to the title page and found a publication date of 1952. There was also an inscription inside the front cover, so she flipped back to read it.

_“Father wouldn’t approve, but you’re seventeen now so you can read all the Muggle books you want. I snuck out of Diagon Alley to get this for you – the lady at the shop said you’d like it based on Jane Eyre being your favorite so far. I don’t know when I’ll see you next, but take care. Love, Irma.”_

Hermione flipped through some of the pages, noting where passages had been underlined. She supposed it had been his mother’s book, and it seemed as if she’d treasured it. She sat down in one of the chairs and began to read somewhere in the middle. She was so engrossed that she didn’t hear him come down the stairs, didn’t realize he was there until he stepped in front of the lamp. She bit her lip and held up the book. “It’s been ages since I read this.”

“I see you go directly for the most dangerous book in the library.” He looked serious – there was never enough indication that he was teasing. And he was wearing a lightweight jumper and jeans. It was strange to see him dressed in such pedestrian clothes.

“Funny,” she replied, nodding to a shelf which contained some of the meanest-looking Dark Arts books she’d ever seen. Some of them were probably even illegal.

“Comparatively harmless. My mum read that one and decided that the people of Milton needed saving.”

“Ah.” She wasn’t sure what to say to that. She didn’t know anything about his parents aside from what Harry had told her. “Your parents are both…deceased?”

“She’s still living. When I turned the first time, it was too risky for her to stay here.” He said it softly, as kindly as he could, but of course it drew blood regardless, given her situation.

“I see.” She didn’t really want to know what he’d done with his mother. His mother had been a witch – it must have been much easier to convince her of the necessity of leaving.

He moved away from her and opened the cupboard. He pulled out a wool coat and slipped it on, and then held a light leather jacket out to her. She got up out of the chair and took it from him. “There’s a chill this time of year. We’ll have to walk to Morrison’s – you can’t Apparate with the torc on.”

She shrugged. It was strange not to be able to use magic, but it was easier in his house than it would have been elsewhere. He didn’t flaunt the difference between them; there was no foolish wand-waving at Spinner’s End. She put on the jacket, and found that it wasn’t embarrassingly large on her and she had only to fold the sleeves back to make it presentable. He was not a big man – the intensity of his personality just made him seem like one.

It was strange. She felt like she’d found a sanctuary, and she was enjoying her time with him. Outside, her world was falling to pieces, but inside these walls she was safe, and comfortable, and not terrified.

Inside his house, she was home.

 

\|/

For the next two days, he sat at the kitchen table writing his reports while instructing her on all manner of cookery. She made spotted dick and curry, baked aubergine and broiled fish. She followed his suggestions without complaint, and his instructions were – as much as possible – patiently given and detailed. The results weren’t Michelin quality, but they were edible. By the time she set the custard on the table after Thursday’s salmon, she looked pleased with herself and a bit knackered. She sighed as she slid into the chair across from him, and he took a bite of the custard.

“Nicely done,” he allowed, because the texture was firm and the taste was smooth. “I’ll do the washing up.”

“Thank you. I’m exhausted.” She gave a little crooked smile around her spoon and he let his eyes rest on her for a moment. She looked much better than she had, pinker and healthier. She was flushed from the activity and her hair had frizzed from the humidity of the steam, coming loose from its tie in little corkscrews. “How do you have any time left if you spend this much of it in the kitchen?”

“I don’t. I generally make eggs or warm up some soup.”

She looked scolding – schoolmarmish. “So you’ve turned me into your House Elf the past few days?”

He thought about letting her misapprehension slide; he took a few more bites before he replied. “You’re keeping busy, and that’s what you need right now. I’ve a potion to test in the morning – you may help me there if you prefer.”

She smiled broadly. “I’d like that!”

Well, then. There was nothing to say to that, so he nodded.

She finished her custard and sighed. “Do you mind if I read for a few minutes before I go to bed?”

“No,” he answered, picking up her bowl and stacking it atop his own. He ran hot water in the sink, and wet the dish flannel.

She watched him from the doorway while he scrubbed the dishes and dried them. She couldn’t see his face, so he allowed himself to smile at her curiosity. She watched him constantly, sneaking little bemused glances under her lashes. He liked that she was puzzled by him – it made him less self-conscious about his own interest, which seemed disproportionate. He’d expected her to have more difficulty adjusting to her circumstances, but she seemed to be handling herself with quite a bit of grace considering, and her presence hadn’t been grating and intrusive. He found that he rather liked having her around, and liked that his house – usually so quiet – hummed with activity and chatter. He found he liked her, after a fashion, now that he was being forced to get to know her. She wasn’t quite the judgmental prig he’d expected.

Instead, he found the problem went deeper than an overwhelming desire to hex her out of existence. He liked it when she laughed at his jokes, and she seemed to understand them in way that very few people – Minerva, really, was the extent – did. Potter would laugh about a minute too late, and never seemed to be quite sure whether his cutting ripostes were in earnest. Hermione, though, was easy to entertain. He didn’t have to try very hard to be someone he wasn’t and she was absurdly grateful for the slightest bit of empathy and kindness.

By all measures but one, he could chalk this up as a resounding success. He’d kept her from falling apart, and helped her put things in perspective.

Except.

Except that somewhere between cleaning the fish and custard, as she bent over the Aga coaxing the ingredients to cooperate in a strange little singsong voice, he’d looked up from his reports and been greeted by the sight of her legs, bare and pale and crossed at the ankles, and a for a moment – before he’d realized what he was looking at – he’d had a visceral reaction to her.

It had only been a moment, but the blood rushed to his groin and he found himself shifting uncomfortably in his chair and berating himself for being a pervert and trying to rationalize his response. There was a woman in his kitchen. She was wearing a fetching skirt and trying very hard to please him. He’d have to have been dead not to notice.

If he’d made a list of the all the possible dangers of trying to pull Granger out of the abyss, lusting after her legs wouldn’t have been anywhere on it. He’d thought of her as a child, mentally and emotionally if not physically. A naïve and outspoken little swot, self-righteous and sanctimonious. But the person in his house was a woman full-grown. And if she wasn’t beautiful in the classic sense, she was attractive in a way that made him want to know if her wit and vivaciousness would still be in evidence if her legs were wrapped around his neck.

“Fuck,” he muttered, scrubbing a plate so hard that he was likely to take the finish off. Three more days and then she would be out of his house and his life could go back to normal. Monday night he could go down to Wigan and find some needy divorcee that was far enough pissed to agree to shag him and get it out of his system. He was just hard-up; he’d let it go too long. It wasn’t Granger that he was responding to – any decent looking woman between the ages of 25 and 50 draping herself over his Aga would have caused a similar reaction.

No, it was fine. It was normal. She hadn’t noticed his discomfort, and he’d just have to be cautious so that it didn’t happen again. The last thing he needed was for Granger to insist on being returned to the Ministry because she’d found out he was a pervert; he imagined an indignant bunch of Weasleys attacking him in the commissary whilst Potter and Shacklebolt snickered behind their hands at the idea that he even had a sex drive. She was a vulnerable young woman in his care. He wouldn’t abuse her trust by wanking to her image.

Not that he could even manage that since she was in his pockets all the time. Somehow he felt like he was invading her personal space when he went to take a shower and change clothes, even though it was his bloody bedroom. How had that happened so quickly?

This is why it was better if no one thought he had any better angels. It was like an Achilles heel. His stupid friends with their stupid pleading eyes. Please, Severus, just join up so that you can protect Hogwarts from Dumbledore. Please, Severus, just watch over Draco. Please, Severus, just keep the little Potter shit from killing himself before Voldemort gets a go. Please, Severus, just make sure Hermione doesn’t have a nervous breakdown.

Every single time he fucked himself. Every single time he failed to learn.

When would he learn that no participation was always the best rule? The whole stupid savior complex; that’s what he and Potter and Lily had all shared. The difference is, he knew he had it – and he fought against it like the devil.

He was not a martyr. He would not go quietly to his death.

He could see where it was all leading, and he was most emphatically not a pervert. He only dallied with women as emotionally distant as he was, and he only did it in impersonal ways. There was never an imbalance of power in the transaction; they had no expectations, and neither did he. But it was different when someone was in your care, and there was already no balance of power. In a best-case scenario, he could possibly take advantage of a vulnerable young woman who would feel guilty enough about her lapse in judgment to keep it secret.

And he liked her too well to do that to her. She hadn’t insisted – as she had the first time he’d seen her once his voice had returned – that nothing was really wrong as long as you did it out of love. Then he hadn’t been sure whether to vomit or hex her, but the bucket had been closer than his wand. She’d been very motherly and comforting before she’d ‘realized the time’ and flounced off, and he’d safely avoided her afterwards.

He’d anticipated a little bit of sadistic pleasure at watching Miss Granger twist under her own pin. And a little bit of real pleasure at helping her down off the board.

Not this. Not a weakness for her legs.

He tossed down the dish towel and looked at the clock; it was only 8pm. The sitting room was quiet, though, and when he peeked into it she was sleeping in one of the chairs with the cat on her lap.

He walked upstairs, and opened the door in the hallway. He navigated around the boxes and piles to the floo in the corner, and tossed a handful of dust in. His head followed. “Shacklebolt, I need a break.”

 

\|/

“Hermione,” the voice whispered. And then a little louder, “Madam Granger!”

She started awake, and miss kitty jumped off her lap. “Snape?”

She blinked – long dark hair. Pale face. Dark robes.

Female.

“Sev went out for a bit, dear, so I came to keep you company.”

“You call him Sev?” Harry said it was the one name no one should ever call him; he’d made the mistake once early on, and would never repeat it.

Andromeda laughed. “He made a vow to stand in the stead of my nephew’s father. That makes him my brother, so to speak.”

“That’s…uh…” Bizarre?

“Archaic. But it’s very important to Cissy so we all go along. Anyway, let’s not waste time talking about him. I was so glad Kingsley let me come see you – we’ve all been terribly worried, and I need a full report to take back to Harry and Ginny. How are you?”

“All right,” she answered, a bit perturbed to be going off the topic of strange pureblood customs. She’d been learning something new, and that was a lot more interesting than talking about her contrition and remorse. “I’m so very sorry to have…what I did was wrong.”

“Well, but we all know why you did it. You shouldn’t blame yourself, and we all forgive you. It’s a bit of a mess, but we’ll work through it.”

But that sounded wrong, she wanted to say. You don’t forgive people just because you love them; that’s not justice. It’s not impartial. “I just feel like – if it were anyone else, I’d be pressing for prosecution.”

“Not if they weren’t well when they did it. You’ve been under a tremendous amount of stress, and I know it must be hard for you now that Harry and Ginny are starting a family. You wanted your parents, that’s natural. But you’re always so strong and put together that none of us realized how much pressure you were under, and we didn’t try to help.”

Of course. That was something a friend would say. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to catch you before you fell. It’s just that her friends were in all the right places.

She was going to let them help. But she realized – it wasn’t justice, but mercy.

“I hope it’s not creating a big mess for Kingsley.”

“We’ve all been more worried about you than anything else. Harry kept saying you were fine, that Sev wouldn’t let you down, but it’s been hard for him especially. He’s been in Kingsley’s office constantly waiting to see if there’s word of how you’re fairing. And Percy’s been handling all the press, and he’s done a fantastic job, so public sentiment is with you right now. You will get through it, but we all know how much you love your job, and…”

“And there’s no way I can continue to be a solicitor when I can’t follow the laws myself. I understand – and really, I’m fine with that. I got so caught up in my career I lost sight of the important things, and maybe it was time to revisit what I’m doing with my life.”

“Are you going to resign then?”

Hermione paused, looking at Andromeda closely. There didn’t seem to be any guile in her, but the timing was all so coincidental. Where had Snape gone, anyway? Had he left because they’d needed to send Andromeda to ensure her cooperation? “Where is Severus?”

“He floo’d us at home about ten minutes ago and said he needed a break. He was off to some muggle pub, I think, and said we shouldn’t wait up for him. Why?”

Severus Snape had gone on a pub crawl? That was the lamest excuse she’d ever heard. He was probably sitting in some all-night coffee shop, reading a book, wondering when it would be safe for him come home and sleep. She sighed. “No reason. He just didn’t tell me he was going out. We talked about it earlier, that’s all. My job.”

“Did he think you should resign?”

_He thought you’d ask me to._

“Oh, he didn’t say. We just talked about what else I would do – if I weren’t working for the Ministry. He suggested writing.”

“That’s a lovely idea! Haven’t you always talked about wanting to find time to work on the tales?”

“Well – yes.” Holy hell. Was he right? Was it really going to be that easy?

“I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me before! If you’ll work on a proposal I can give it to Cissy. She’s on the board at Burke’s Press, and I’m sure they’d be willing to risk an advance for your first book. Your name on the cover alone will help them move.”

It was. He was scary brilliant.

Now she was desperate to know what he’d said. “I just want something to occupy my time as potions used to do”, or “I miss everything about Hogwarts but the students and the responsibility.” She couldn’t wait for him to come home. Maybe if she signed a resignation document Andromeda would leave and Severus would come back early. He could be reached by Patronus, surely, wherever he was.

“Here – I’ll write the letter now. You can take it with you, and Kingsley can accept it tomorrow. You can say it was delivered from the undisclosed location where I’m recuperating from the trauma. Isn’t that what Percy called it?”

“We’re trying to keep Sev out of it. You know how he is about publicity.”

She smiled. “Yes, I do.”

She got up and went to the writing desk that was parked against the wall. She opened the top and breathed deeply – his parchment was so fresh the smell was almost overpowering. He must go through reams of it. The quill was heavy and well-made, and the inkpot solid silver and heirloom quality. It was an old desk, one that had been treasured and cared for through several generations. It felt official, holding his quill, and the balanced heft ensured that no matter badly her hands were trembling it didn’t show in her script.

_Minister Shacklebolt and distinguished members of the Wizengamot,_

_Due to recent failures in personal judgment, I am tendering my resignation effective immediately. It is clear that at present my personal situation conflicts with my ability to appropriately represent the Magical Creatures division and the Ministry._

_Whether or not my failings were of a civil or criminal nature will be adjudicated by the august members of your council, but I cannot continue in a position of public trust during that process._

_I remain your humble servant and am willing to work with my former colleagues to ensure a smooth transition of responsibilities._

_Sincerely,_

_Madam H.J. Granger, OMFC_

It was done. If anything, she felt better. The loose ends were being tied, and they could all move forward.

“Are you sure? I don’t want you to feel as if Sev pressured you into doing this.”

She found that a little offensive, actually, considering that Kingsley and Andromeda had probably snuggled in bed together and discussed the necessity of her resignation as a form of pillow talk. Severus had predicted it, but that’s all he’d done. He shouldn’t be framed as some sort of scapegoat. “No one pressured me. It’s really for the best, and I’m not without skills.”

“Not at all! You’re going to be a wonderful writer, for a start.”

“Do you really think so?” Weren’t they just trying to help her out of a tight spot? She wanted to write, but that didn’t mean anyone else should want to read it.

“Of course. You’ll be brilliant. What did he think of it?”

“He told me I should update Hogwarts: A History as well.”

Andromeda froze. She went absolutely still in her chair, her hand poised in the air mid-expression. She dropped her arm. “He did?”

Why was that so shocking? Maybe just because Andromeda didn’t get the joke; didn’t realize how she’d lugged the book around as a child like it was some sort of security blanket. “He was mocking me a bit, I think.”

Andromeda looked at her sideways, shaking her head. “If I were you, I’d take him up on the offer. Before he decides to rescind it.”

“What offer?”

Andromeda laughed. “Maybe you have to grow up around Slytherin. The single most controversial Headmaster in the history of Hogwarts told you to start writing a revision while you were trapped in his house and you didn’t begin a dialog around that?”

“It…didn’t seem like an offer for anything. He doesn’t like me – I don’t know why he’d offer to help me. Especially with something that personal.”

Andromeda leaned back in the chair, stretching out her legs. “If he disliked you, it wouldn’t have taken him this long to crack and floo us. We were expecting to hear from him much sooner, in fact.”

“Well, we have got on rather well. He’s teaching me how to cook like a Muggle and he’s let me have the run of the house and he tells me about his potions work. I know I’m supposed to be inconsolable, but it’s actually been sort of fun.”

“Hmmmm.”

Hermione sat up a little so that she could see Andromeda’s expression, but it was curiously blank. “Hmm what?”

“I don’t know. He’s a puzzle. He always has been. My theory is that he can’t really even understand himself, so how in Merlin’s name should we expect to?”

Hermione giggled. “Where do you think he actually is right now?”

“Out at some pub, certainly.”

“What? Really?” Doing what, exactly? She couldn’t imagine him in a pub.

Andromeda shuddered. “Draco’s told enough tales out of school about the pubs in Wigan Pier for me to believe that’s where he is.”

“But why?”

The Minister of Magic’s wife groaned and wrinkled her nose. “He’s a single forty-five year old man. Why do any of them spend time loitering in pubs alone?”

“Oh.” Why hadn’t she come up with that? Because he seemed so strangely asexual with his lifelong devotion to an ideal? Or – more personally humiliating – because during the four days she’d been trapped in his house he’d never given any sign that he saw her in such a manner? Because it was quite obviously the latter, or she wouldn’t feel so offended by the idea that he’d pawned her off on his so-called sister so he could pop out for a drink and a shag.

What the hell was wrong with her? It didn’t matter who he shagged; he’d come home to her at the end of the night.

Good God. She’d fallen prey to the Stockholm Syndrome. Already.

Maybe she really was mentally unstable. Why else would she care?

“I’ve got a headache. Do you mind if I go and lay down for a bit?”

“Not at all. Would you be more comfortable if we turned off the lamp?”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll go to the bedroom if that’s all right.” She got up out of the chair and turned to Andromeda, who was looking at her with a great deal of interest, and she realized how it must have sounded. “He’s been sleeping down here, that’s what I meant.”

Andromeda smiled, but the curiosity didn’t leave her eyes. “Of course. This way we won’t disturb you while you rest.”

“Right. Thank you – for everything. Give Kingsley and Harry and all my love.”

“I will. Take care of yourself. Goodnight.” Andromeda rose up on an elbow and kissed her cheek, and Hermione headed up the stairs – but she was aware of the other woman watching her out of one eye, and she had the distinct feeling that she’d somehow given herself away.

She hoped the report that would go back to the rest of them would just be that she still seemed a little fragile and unstable, and not that she’d developed some predictable and pathetic crush on her benevolent jailer. Because that’s what he was, really, when you got down to it. She wasn’t here because he wanted to spend time with her; he’d got stuck with her, because underneath it all he was a good man who’d do anything for a friend.

She felt that she wouldn’t be having these thoughts if he’d stayed home, and that made her feel even more pathetic. Her emotional state wasn’t dependent upon him, surely. She’d like it if they could still be friends after this was all over and done, but the attraction part would pass along with the nonsensical possessiveness.

It’s just that once you admitted he was a youngish enough man with a sex drive, then you had to give credence to the theory that he was the sort of the man who wouldn’t do a thing unless he knew it could be done well. Therefore, if he were actively looking for a shag, it stood to reason that he would make some woman relatively happy for the evening. And he wasn’t handsome at all, but the intensity and force of his personality, and the elegance of his movements – those made up for any defects in structure he might have. So yes, in that sense it was all right to be a bit jealous.

She found herself thinking about the type of woman he might go for. Striking and pretty, she thought, like Lily had been. It was interesting that when he went out, he went to the Muggle world. She wondered why, and then realized it was the only place he could be anonymous. He really did guard his reputation carefully.

It seemed like it must be pretty lonely, though. Her last relationship had been with Terry Boot, and while they hadn’t been all that compatible they had still known each other. Loved each other, in a way. There hadn’t been much passion, but they’d enjoyed spending time together. Whereas he couldn’t know his partners very well if he was meeting them in pubs and pretending to be a Muggle. She tried to imagine how some awkward first date conversation could lead to sex, and found she was at a loss. What sort of women threw themselves at men in pubs?

And if they were winding up with men like him, maybe she should give the strategy a little more thought.

It had been seven months. And no one was going to want her now that her life was in shambles. No one who really knew her, anyway.

Maybe – if he was up for it –

Oh God, how embarrassing would that be?

She slept fitfully.

 

\|/

Three hours, he thought, ducking into the same alley he’d just visited, but this time in order to Apparate. That was a near record. Tourists were best, followed by hen parties; maids of honor were always the sort of sweet girls who wouldn’t give him the time of day if they were in their element, but once unleashed for a night or a week decided that a quick shag with a cleaned-up bad boy would make for a grand adventure when retold back on the farm. He was well-dressed and well-spoken and obviously intelligent, which put to rest all their doubts about his character. And he really was harmless, endeavoring to always leave them happier than when he found them and almost always succeeding.

Certainly, the buxom little schoolteacher from Islington had giggled when she kissed him sloppily at the door to the pub and told him he’d always be a fond memory. And she had been thrilled when, during a stroll heavy with sexual tension, he’d pushed her up against a wall in a deserted alley and assured her they wouldn’t be seen. He’d put his hand up her skirt, and found that she was already ready. He hadn’t even had to remove her knickers – she’d fished a condom out of her handbag and pulled them off herself while he was rolling it on. A few kisses and controlled hip rolls and she was boneless against the wall. And he’d forced himself to keep his eyes open as he’d thrust up into her, watching the way her large breasts bobbed and swayed and the way her blue eyes crossed as her shoulders ground against the brick. He deliberately took her in a position where he could see her face to remind himself – in the moment of release – that she was not Hermione Granger.

She was Charlotte. Or Caroline. Something like that.

He didn’t feel any better. If anything, he felt worse. He wondered if being an emotionally constipated prick was better than being a pervert. Perhaps he was both.

The trysts had never bothered him before. They seemed like a sensible solution to an age-old problem, a solution that left both parties better off at the end of the night than the beginning. They were all consenting adults, and they all got something out of it.

Except as much as he had tried to brand the image of the schoolteacher into his head, all he could think about was how the experience varied from what it would have been if Granger had been in her place.

Granger wouldn’t let him touch her with a pole, that was the bloody difference. And he wasn’t fool enough to give over to the temptation of imagining anything else.

With a crack and a pop, he was in his bedroom. He’d change clothes before he headed downstairs for the night. But he had expected her to be up talking to Andromeda, not sitting in his bed with a look of alarm on her face. The cat had woken as well, and was also staring. He tried not to notice that her shoulders were bare except for two tiny straps, or that her hair looked a mad halo. Her voice was sleepy and rough. “Severus? Oh good, you’re home.”

She blinked, smiled, and then snuggled back under the covers. He stared at her uselessly for a moment before leaving the room. He didn’t even remember to get another set of clothes out of the closet.

Andromeda was reading, a book propped on her knees and scroll rolled up in her lap. She looked up and smiled when she saw him. “You’re back earlier than I expected.”

“Yes,” he admitted, sliding his gaze away. He wasn’t sure why he felt guilty when he had nothing to feel guilty about. He’d needed to get away from Granger, even if it hadn’t done him any good. “How was your evening?”

Andromeda held up the scroll. “She resigned. I’m sorry to see it, but it does make things a bit more clear cut. And she told me she was thinking of being a writer, and that you’d encouraged her.”

He narrowed his gaze. It hadn’t been encouragement. It had merely been an honest admission of her talents. “She will need some employment, surely?”

“Of course she will. Thank you again. You have no idea how much your involvement has set our minds to rest.”

“Putting too much faith in me is a mistake.” It was almost an automatic response, but by God he meant it.

“So you always say. Let us know if you need anything. Night, Sev.”

He screwed up his face in disgust and waved her off. “Off you go, Madam Minister.”

She nodded her head and mounted the stairs while he shook out a blanket and crawled into the chair. He wanted his cat back, even if it was a traitor, but at least it was early enough that he might still get some sleep and be functional the next morning.

 

\|/

It wasn’t conscious on her part. Not premeditated in the least. She hadn’t thought about why she pulled her hair into a loose chignon, or put on low-heeled boots and a skirt and a blouse that was sheer enough you could make out the contours of her bra beneath it. It was the sort of thing she would’ve worn to go out for lunch with Ginny and Luna, attractive and flattering but not seductive.

But…flattering and attractive.

She knew immediately that she’d done something wrong when she wandered into the kitchen. His eyes had come up from his paper, raked over her, and then he’d flushed a little and buried himself even deeper behind the folds of The Prophet.

And then, because of his reaction, she knew what she’d done.

And the fact that he’d noticed made her even more curious about his response. She walked over to pour herself a cup of coffee. “I hope you had a lovely evening.”

“Yes, I had…an errand to run.”

She laughed – tried to keep it light. “Andromeda thought you’d gone out to the pubs.”

He shifted in his chair. “I gathered as much.”

So he wasn’t going to lie to her, but he wouldn’t readily admit his purpose. Interesting. She sat down across from him. “You know, I never even stopped to ask if you had a girlfriend or something I was keeping you from. I’m sorry I’ve put you out like this.”

He snorted. “You haven’t got in the road of any social life. I don’t have one.”

“Even so, it’s not like you wanted me in your pockets all the time.”

“Stop belaboring this. I told you it’s fine,” he snapped, flicking his paper closed and tossing it on the table. He didn’t meet her eyes, but his were flashing. “I’m going to shower and change if you’re finished loitering in my bedroom.”

He got up from the table and the chair made a scraping noise as he shoved it back. His brow had converged in the middle of his forehead, linked by a deep furrow that began above his nose. He was tense and impatient. He was in a Professor Snape sort of mood.

Strangely, while she should have been put off by his blistering state, she was more amused than anything else. It occurred to her that a defensive Severus Snape was a vulnerable one, and she’d somehow hit a mark. So she didn’t try to call him back.

And he looked damned attractive in his lightweight jumper and snug jeans, even if it didn’t snap and crack and billow as robes would have. She enjoyed the view while he was stomping away.

Maybe last night hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped.

She considered the deep look of interest that had crossed his face momentarily, the flush that sat high on his pale cheeks. Did she want him to find her attractive? And if she did, was it vanity or a specific sort of yearning driving her need?

She sat down at the table, looking over the side of her chair. “Do you think I’ve gone mad, Miss Kitty?”

The cat continued to eat its kibble without paying her a bit of attention, and she sighed and picked up The Prophet.

Her resignation would be in tomorrow’s paper, but it appeared that the day before had been fairly uneventful. One of Ginny’s stories about a Quidditch match made the front page above the fold. She couldn’t bring herself to read it with any interest, but she skimmed it because it had been written by Gin, and she liked to be able to honestly say that she was reading her friend’s work.

McLaggen had been penalized by the Cannons for unsportsmanlike conduct off the pitch. Still a douche, then.

She wondered how Severus looked in the shower. He was thin and lank, but he hadn’t grown soft since the end of the war. There was still a wiry strength in the way he carried himself, and she thought his muscles would be long and compact. For a brief moment of insanity, she thought about going upstairs to see if she could accidentally walk in on him, but imagining the look on his face stopped her. He wouldn’t be overcome with passion; he’d be absolutely mortified.

Surely this was just a case of gratitude mixing with a tentative friendship to produce some sort of fixation. Being trapped with anyone this long would produce a yearning for deeper intimacy; she’d even had one or two moments in the Forest of Dean where she’d considered Harry in a different light, although she would deny it within an inch of her life if anyone ever asked. She was still denying it to Ron, actually. She loved Harry as a brother; she was growing to like Severus as a friend. Same thing, essentially.

She’d gotten the reaction she wanted, but it had made him angry. Lesson learned – she wouldn’t do it again. Having his support and friendship was more valuable than testing the boundaries of his patience. She’d go put a different outfit on as soon as he returned from the first floor.

She dug out the leftover eggplant and a few eggs and started a scramble.

She needed to think about something else - anything else. She needed a job, something more mentally engaging than cooking eggs. She had written things constantly in her previous career, but he was correct in saying that it had all been a lot of dull legal maneuverings. How did one begin a freelance writing career? By writing, she supposed. Perhaps it was as simple as that.

“Did you know that Hogwarts: A History has an error on page 342? Headmistress Derwent didn’t actually learn healing during the Goblin Wars, because she was only twelve when the treaty was signed. That’s always bothered me.” She turned down the burner and leaned back against the counter. Miss Kitty didn’t appear to have a response to that – she seemed utterly disinterested. “And it only goes up to when Dumbledore took over. It’s hardly any use at all anymore with everything that’s happened in the last fifty years. It really does need an update, wouldn’t you say?”

The cat finally looked up from her kibble, blinking at her warily through slanted yellow eyes. She bent down on the floor, scratching around the ears and eliciting a stretch and a low purr in response. “That’s right, Miss Kitty. We’re going to fix it, aren’t we?”

“What are you nattering on about?” She glanced up. He was leaning on the door jamb, watching her. He’d put on another pair of jeans, and his ubiquitous boots – dragonhide for work, Doc Martens at home, but there was very little difference in styling save the yellow thread that wound around the sole on the casual version. He’d put on a button-down linen shirt and rolled the sleeves up. The first two buttons were undone, and she could see the pink scars where his neck met his collarbone. They were covered by a tattoo, a red and orange phoenix with its wings outstretched. Her eyes lingered on it, and after a moment his hand rose to cover his throat. He pulled the edges of the placket together and shifted his feet. “Did you just call the cat Miss Kitty?”

She smiled and pushed herself up on the balls of her feet. “I can’t address her as the cat. It’s weird.”

“It’s weird to talk to the cat as if it understood your endless chatter, Granger. You made breakfast?” He walked past her to the range and pulled a couple of plates out of the cabinet. Feeling useless, she took a seat at the table and watched him. His shoulders were still tense, but he seemed determined to act as if nothing had happened, which was probably for the best. She would’ve been mortified if he’d insisted on a post-mortem of the morning. There was even a bit of whimsy in his voice as he set a plate of eggs down in front of her and refilled their coffee cups. “Miss Kitty is a ridiculous moniker. Don’t humiliate the cat that way in the future.”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

“When it fails to use the litter box, I sometimes resort to Stupid Gryffindor. It’s a smallish lion, after all, and a gift from the matriarch of that ignominious little club.”

“You would,” she responded, pulling a face.

“I was born a snake and I will die a snake, although for obvious reasons it’s best if I don’t try to turn one into a familiar.”

She smiled at the dry joke and the way he smirked around his fork as he took a bite of his scramble, raising his eyebrows archly.

“Well I’m not going to call her Stupid Gryffindor so you’ll have to come up with something else.”

“It’s a cat,” he growled, but then his eyes began to sparkle with mischief and it made her a little nervous. “Fine. We’ll call her Pussy.”

“Pardon?” She choked a bit on her eggs and had to swallow a gulp of coffee to sooth her throat. But the way he’d drawn out the word had made it sound knowing and decadent.

“Pussy Galore, but that’s a mouthful for every day.”

She felt her skin turn pink as the different ways that could be interpreted crossed through her head. She recognized the reference of course, and it could be taken as an entirely innocent allusion to a popular character, a bit of Muggle humor. Or not. “So does that make you James Bond?”

He sat back in his chair, crossing his hands over his chest and resting his chin on his pointed index fingers. “I wish. It turns out that a career as a spy is not nearly as exciting as the movies would have you believe. Rather more droning meetings and moments of quiet terror and less reckless adventure. Glamorous Bardot types were particularly thin on the ground.”

She had a sudden mental image of him hiding in a corner at a Death Eater meeting, silently bemoaning the fact that not a single reedy blond in a short skirt was throwing herself his way, and she grinned at him. “You poor thing. I can see why Kingsley didn’t let you testify after all.”

“Kind of him, wasn’t it, to rely on the portraits?”

That reminded her of what Andromeda said the previous evening, and although she still didn’t quite believe it she lowered her head and looked at him through her lashes. “I’ve been thinking about Hogwarts: A History.”

“Have you?” His expression – a sort of pasted-on pantomime of smarmy innocence – made her think that he was probably relishing other potential replies in the privacy of his own head.

“You and Minerva know more about it than anyone else. It seems like there would be a great deal of research involved.”

He nodded, growing more serious. “Research is one of your strengths, if I recall.”

Negotiation, Andromeda said, but she didn’t have the patience to try to talk around it. And he was too clever for that to work anyway. “What would it take to get you to agree to help me with it?”

He considered her for a moment that stretched on so long she began to fidget with her fork, poking at her breakfast. “Slavish adherence to my point of view.”

“I’m serious. I think I could only pull it off if you were willing to help me.”

“What makes you think I wasn’t serious?”

“Please. What do you really want?”

He tilted his head in consideration and his tongue threaded out to moisten his lips. She swallowed. His eyes were full of fire and defiance and certain sort of hunger, and it was a bit alarming. She tried not to quell under it, but the hair on her arms stood on end. “A balanced rendering will mean empathizing with other points of view. Even if you don’t agree with them.”

“Yes. Even Dumbledore’s.”

He dropped the intensity almost immediately, and there was almost a bit of grief in the cast of his jaw, which tightened. Somehow she’d turned the tables on him; the shift in power was palpable. His eyes flicked down to stare at hands. “I would have thought you’d identify with that one strongly.”

She did. That was the problem – it had always been the problem. She’d been his chosen deputy where Harry was concerned, just as he’d left the Order to Minerva and Hogwarts to Severus. “You mean because I have all of the same flaws?”

He didn’t look up at her. His voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear it. “Because you have most of his strengths. But you have a kindness about you as well that he never had.”

She didn’t think about her actions – she reached under the table and put her hand on his knee. He twitched, but he didn’t insist that she remove it, so she squeezed his leg softly. “Just as Minerva has the practicality he lacked. And just as you have the courage.”

He blinked quickly and he shook his head, but he didn’t respond. She felt she’d pushed things too far, so she stood up and stacked her empty plate on top of his. “I’ll do the washing while you start your potion.”

He grunted, but he sat at the table in silence for a while as she ran the water and grabbed a flannel. He got up, cup in hand, and came to the counter, topping off his coffee. She could tell he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, but then he turned away and she heard him heading for the basement. She let out a breath and picked at a stubborn bit of egg with the edge of her fingernail. He needed a better skillet; this was one was old and battered and some of the finish had begun to peel off.

She thought of her grandmother’s La Creusets in her pantry. They were probably covered in dust, because even with the aid of magic she rarely ventured beyond a casserole dish.

He hadn’t said yes, but he hadn’t said no either. He seemed to be weighing it, testing her. She hadn’t quite realized that if he did agree – or even if he didn’t, actually – updating the book would necessitate telling his story, and Dumbledore and Minerva’s as well. She was considering etching them in ink for the benefit of posterity; the prospect had to be a daunting one to someone who valued their privacy so highly. It showed a great deal of faith in her that he would even entertain the idea of opening up on the record.

She thought it might be best to give him some time to clear his head, and she could use a skim through the book in question since it had been a while since she’d lugged it everywhere and consulted it daily. She started just inside the door to the sitting room and ran her gaze along the spines. They were grouped together by use, she realized, as she encountered the section on werewolves. It contained biology tomes, myth and legend, legal history, and various potions books which were somehow related to the development of Wolfsbane. Once she realized that, she knew that she was looking for a section on the school and teaching.

She tried not to think about the significance of some of the groups. One was clearly centered around the concept of Horcruxes, another evocative of enchanted objects and the Hallows. There were sections on flight and transfiguration and various types of curses and charms. She tried not to linger on a set that was clearly about sex magic, although she was deeply curious.

She moved to the next shelf down and found what she looking for tucked between the rather lurid “Lives of the Founders” and the (probably cringe-worthy) “Helping Hufflepuff: The Forgotten House”.

It wasn’t his mother’s copy, but his own. It was the 1963 revision, and it went up through the retirement of Armando Dippet in 1956.

She curled up in one of the chairs and cracked it open. It wasn’t until page three that she realized what she held in her hands, but there it was in black and white. The text said that Rowena Ravenclaw had been in Albania when Slytherin and Gryffindor had their falling out, but the text was crossed out and an arrow pointed to a note written in the margin.

_Rubbish, per G.L. R.R. encouraged rift. See 1549 rev. for orig. txt_

Holy hell. The thing was a goldmine. She snapped it shut, suddenly unsure she should be reading it. He hadn’t agreed to help her yet. What if he refused after she’d already seen his notes? Her memory was near-eidetic; even if she only read it once, the outline would remain. She’d know approximately what to look for and where. And she didn’t dare look at any of the later sections; what would she find, for example, under Phineas?

Her heart was racing, and her palms felt damp; she dropped the book onto the side table. She went to the stairs, and walked about halfway down, so that her head was still hidden but she could see his legs and feet as he stood at the bench.

“Do you have a copy of Hogwarts: A History I can borrow? Ginny didn’t pack mine.”

He’d been shifting his weight from one foot to another according to some internal rhythm, but he paused and then turned. She couldn’t see his chest and face from this vantage, but he was facing her. She suddenly remembered that she was still wearing the skirt and boots, her feet on different steps and her legs spread, so she clenched her thighs and tugged the hem down a little. He spun away from her and she could see his hands clenching the edge of the desk. She was glad – she felt a little self-conscious, although it had been innocent.

“Third case, fourth shelf. Though be warned – I mark up my books. I don’t want a lecture.”

That counted as permission. She would have hugged him if it wouldn’t have been weird. Instead, she smiled, and it carried to her voice even though he couldn’t see it. “I know. I was behind your notes in potions all of sixth year.”

After a long moment where she wasn’t sure if she’d upset him by alluding to the past, he chuckled. “You hated that book for being more clever than you were, didn’t you?”

She thought about that for a moment. She had hated it, that was true enough. But she wasn’t sure he had the correct reason. “No. I hated it because I wanted it so badly.”

That seemed to have so many deeper ramifications. They sunk into the silence. After a few minutes, she realized that he seemed submerged as well. He hadn’t moved or spoken or even seemed to breathe. His knuckles were white.

“I’ll just – thanks, for the book.” The words fell out of her mouth like rocks in a tumbler, all stream of consciousness.

“Right,” he answered, but it was more as if he was clearing his throat than responding.

She ran up the stairs, grabbed the book off the table, and proceeded to the bedroom, flopping down on the bed face first. Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest, and she felt like her abdomen was twisting. It was something like arousal or fear, maybe a combination of both. She looked down at the book that was tucked beneath her chin and then propped up on her elbows. Her ankles hung off the bed, drug down by the weight of the knee-high leather. The skirt had ridden up around her thighs, and her blouse had come untucked.

She was a grown woman who’d not been sheltered. She had experience of the world, but she didn’t know what to call what had happened back there. She hadn’t been aroused at the time, but rather self-conscious and nervous and fumbling. It wasn’t until she turned from him in flight that she had felt both unassailable and powerless all at once, and like she wanted him to follow, hunt her, throw her down on the bed and nip at her neck. She tossed the book aside and groaned into the pillow.

Was this part of the Stockholm Syndrome as well? It was raw need, an almost animal lust. She couldn’t fight it because she didn’t even know what it was or where it had come from. And her feelings about him were so mixed up that she didn’t know whether she coming or going.

She remembered Andromeda saying that he was a puzzle. Perhaps he was, and perhaps he was beyond her ability to figure out the solution to. Or maybe he was as confused as she was, although it was unlikely that he was having the same physical reaction to her. Otherwise he would be walking around in a state of dumbfounded yearning and lust, his skin aflame and his mind muddled.

He seemed perfectly all right. She was the problem. He most likely thought she was insane, and it was up to her to put them back on even ground. She needed to stop being so affected by him before she destroyed whatever tentative sort of friendship they’d built.

 

\|/ 

He was well and truly fucked, and she was – inadvertently, perhaps – torturing him. He hadn’t felt so raw in ages, so turned inside out. He hadn’t even been sure he was still capable of feeling whatever this was. He’d chalked it up as part of the hormonal high of adolescence, a remnant of a distant past.

But no, here it was, risen out of the ashes like a fucking phoenix, the bane bird of his existence.

He had to be the stupidest person on earth.

He felt the anger building inside at him. It was, as always, self-directed – but it was rage nonetheless. He picked up a glass stopper, tested its weight with his fist, and then hurled it against the wall. It didn’t shatter, but it cracked in half when it hit the floor and he felt marginally better.

Somehow he had to find a way to work out this tension. Casual sex wasn’t a solution, as he’d learned the night before. Neither was treating her as a friend, as he’d learned this morning. But snarling at her had been even worse, especially since she bore his bad behavior with a look of tolerant affection, as if it amused her. As if she saw it for the weakness it was, but overlooked it.

Damn her. She was fucking with him, she had to be.

Never mind that it would be totally out of character for her to do so; it was the only reasonable explanation. He’d known she was going to be a bit emotionally unstable. Perhaps that instability might even extend so far as to make him look – what? – not completely hideous? He was good at reading women. He’d made a moonlighting of reading people in general, and then he’d fostered some sort of human connection using that talent for deciphering hidden meanings. He was able to have his little trysts precisely because he was so good at reading body language, and could correctly identify the woman most likely to be taken in by his dubious charms. And if he had been in a pub, he would have read her queer expressions and her skittishness and her hand on his bloody knee as…an invitation.

And it probably was. She was probably reaching out to the one person who was trapped here with her, looking for a sort of safe harbor. It would have been Longbottom, for example, were Longbottom the one who’d been tasked with her safety.

He was a head case. He really did need some sort of intervention.

He realized he’d cut the circulation off in his hands, and he dropped the edge of the bench and shook out his wrists, balling his fists a few times to get the blood back in his digits.

From many other women of his acquaintance, including all of the girls that had gone through his common room over the years, the casual question about borrowing a book, when accompanied by fidgeting with a short skirt and parting the knees, would have been a blatant attempt to exchange sex for the requested object. Except that he just didn’t believe that Granger had it in her to be so forward, or so unemotional.

It had been self-conscious, but not conscious. She hadn’t realized the way her thighs had rubbed together as she tried to adjust her skirt, or that fiddling with it had drawn his attention directly there. He couldn’t see her face as she spoke, but he could hear her, and he could practically see all the way up her skirt from where he stood. She had a mole on the inside of her right thigh, a tiny brown dot. He had fixated on it, wondering if there were others to connect it to hidden beneath the fabric. He had swallowed hard, and felt all of the blood rush to his groin, and he spun quickly away from her to hide his reaction, gripping the table in an effort not to rub up against the edge with his hips. His breathing was ragged as various scenarios flitted through his mind. He wanted to map her with his hands and his tongue, wanted to mark every expression that crossed her face as he explored her body. He wanted to shove his hands up her skirt and see her come undone.

He’d had enough presence of mind to somehow acknowledge her when she left, and to note the fact that her steps slowed but didn’t stop in the sitting room before she was headed up the next flight of stairs. That meant that she’d already found the book, and she’d been asking permission to use it. A Slytherin wouldn’t have asked; they’d have hoped he stayed in the basement long enough to get a good bit of notes in before they were discovered.

She was a danger, an addiction. Already he didn’t think he could give her up cold and go back to avoiding her at functions and pushing her away. He was already far enough gone that she’d entered that tight circle of people he couldn’t bring himself to brush off. She’d wormed her way into his heart. To coax her into his bed would be a disaster.

She was dangerous and addictive. She was like a narcotic, and he could clearly see the edge of the abyss.

No matter how much he wanted her, he couldn’t give in to it. Once she was away from here, she would remember herself and feel embarrassed enough that she’d encouraged him. If he accepted what she was offering, her mortification would be complete.

He needed a miracle. He needed her to disappear.

Cold turkey. That was the only way to kick a habit. Scratching the itch would only make it worse. 

He found himself wishing or praying or whatever it was called. Giving up, essentially. He rocked his back, ducking his head, and stared at the grain of the table.

He was out of ideas. He flicked his wand and summoned his Patronus, hoping for a miracle. 


	3. Choice

“Hermione? Love, wake up.”

“Wha?” She rolled over, bringing the comforter with her. She wasn’t sure where she was at first. Her mouth was dry and her thighs felt cold, and then she realized that she was still wearing her boots. And that Ginny’s voice was ringing in her ears. “Gin?”

She sat up quickly. Ginny was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing her knee through the blanket and smiling. “Merlin, we’ve been so worried about you. How are you?”

“Fine,” she lied, blinking back tears. “How did you get in here? Does Severus know you’re here?”

“Don’t be silly. He and Harry are downstairs. They sent me up to get you. You’ll never believe what’s just happened. There was a hearing this afternoon and all the charges have been dropped, so you can come home with Harry and me!”

The first thing she felt was bereft. It overpowered the confusion and the relief, and she wanted to protest that she wasn’t ready to leave yet. But that wouldn’t make any sense. “How?”

“You were acting on a threat. The Wizengamot threw it out as self-defense on the grounds that you were an adult witch trying to protect your household.”

“But the law clearly states that there has to be evidence of an actual threat or a confession stating that one was made.”

Ginny nodded slowly. “Harry didn’t believe it either, but what’s done is done. Draco testified that he sent you a letter about your parents, saying that if you didn’t move them they’d be killed. It’s a confession, whether it’s true or not.”

She picked at the thread on the blanket. Ginny wouldn’t make up something so far-fetched, but why would Draco have done that? There hadn’t been any letter. There hadn’t been any threat, just Tonk’s roundabout offer to start the process rolling. “So that’s it? Draco makes something up and everyone gets off free?”

“It’s not nothing. Kingsley already accepted your resignation. You don’t have a job anymore. But nobody wants to see you punished, love.”

She nodded because she didn’t trust herself not to say something stupid if she spoke.

“Harry’s got your wand and he can take the torc off. But we all agreed you shouldn’t be alone right now, so you’re going to come stay with us for a while.”

“Why?” She didn’t want to go to Grimmauld. She didn’t really want to go back to her flat in Diagon Alley either. If she had a choice, she preferred to be right where she was.

Cuddled up in Severus Snape’s bed.

Except that was the point, wasn’t it? He didn’t want her in his bed, or his house, or his life. He wanted her to go back to the periphery and get on with things.

“All right. Give me a couple of minutes to pack and I’ll be down.”

“Sure thing. I’ve missed you.” Ginny leaned over and kissed her cheek, and Hermione smiled. It was a sweet gesture, even if it was a bit empty. They sometimes went two or three weeks without seeing each other, and it hadn’t even been ten days. But she knew what Ginny meant, because it was different when you knew a friend needed you and you couldn’t be there for them.

Ginny sprang off the bed while Hermione sat up fully and pushed off the blanket, running her fingers through her hair. She picked the book off the comforter, hugging it to her chest. Ginny was just at the door.

“Could you send Severus up for a second? I need to make sure I put things back where I found them.”

Ginny looked baffled by the request, but nodded. She was only on the second step when she called out – far too loudly for the tiny house. “She’s fine, Harry. And Snape – she needed your help with something up there. We’ll just wait here, yeah? Or I could put – “

The stairs creaked. She knelt next to the bed, opening her trunk and arranging her clothes a little more neatly. She’d have to grab her shampoo and her face creams, but that was it. She was otherwise packed.

She heard the door close behind her, and then – after a moment – the white buzz of a muffliato. She closed her eyes, grateful for the privacy it afforded them. She grabbed the book from the bed and held it up, waiting for him to cross the room and take it. He did, but then he squatted down next to her and laid it in her trunk. “Even you can’t read that fast. You’ll need this – it’s a daunting endeavor.”

She nodded. Her throat felt full and she blinked quickly to keep the tears at bay. She didn’t dare look at him. “Thank you. For everything, not just that.”

“None of that, right.” His voice sounded a bit husky. It was strange. She wondered if he was a bit sorry to see her go as well. He held a wand in his left hand – she realized a moment later that it was hers. He flicked it toward the bathroom, summoning her toiletries, and then laid them in the trunk next to the book. He laid the wand down next to her hand. His pinky brushed against the side of her wrist as he pulled his hand away.

“You asked Draco to perjure himself,” she breathed, fingering the end of her wand. It all seemed so blindingly clear, how it had all happened. “Why?”

“I didn’t. That took me by surprise as much as it did everyone. I did speak to him this morning, but it wasn’t my intention that he do whatever it took to exonerate you.”

“Oh.” But still, what had he told Draco that it had come to that? What sort of seed had he planted?

“I’m not sorry he did it.”

“Why?” She looked at him, kneeling next to her in front of her trunk. His hair swept down in curtains, and his neck was bent. She could only see the tips of his eyelashes and the narrow arch of his long nose.

Slowly, he turned his head toward her. His eyes were dark but bright, burning with intensity and defiance. His lips were turned up slightly at the corners, but it wasn’t like a smile.

She wasn’t sure how long they stared at each other, but she felt splayed open by it, eviscerated. Her heart skittered. She could feel his breath at this distance, and it seemed to be closing between them. Was she swaying on her knees? It was like a sort of gravity; she was falling sideways.

“No net ensnares you.”

She blinked quickly, pulling away from him. “Jane Eyre.”

“Is that where it’s from? My mum used to say it all the time.” He looked away from her, slowly closing the lid of her trunk and pushing himself back to his feet. He brushed at his trousers and then held out his hand to her. “Go. It’s undeserved, and it’s maybe a little tainted, but it’s redemption.”

“I guess.” It seemed easier to take it from him somehow. He knew. And maybe that’s why Draco had done it, because he also knew. His palm was warm against hers, his skin calloused. She let him pull her up so that she could close her hand around his tightly. She let the momentum carry her onto the balls of her feet and she leaned in, pressing her lips against his cheek. Their hands were trapped between his hip and the cleft of her thighs, and his knuckles brushed against her just as she felt his stubble against her lips. It was a firm kiss, but chaste. It was a kiss of gratitude and friendship, except that their breaths were coming fast and his fist was buried between her thighs. She pulled her neck back and rocked back down on her heels. Their hands came apart, but his seemed to trace a path up and over her hip before he brought it back to his side. He turned his shoulders away, and she remembered that Harry was downstairs waiting for her.

“I’ll get your trunk,” he said suddenly, casting a lightening but not a shrinking spell. He bent down and grabbed the handles, propping it on his thighs. It was as if he were trying to put a large object between them. Whatever had maybe almost happened – he didn’t want to happen. And that was all right. She wasn’t going to chase him.

“If I have questions –“ she began, but he cut in.

“You know where to find me. Let’s get you on your way.”

His chin was up, his head turned away. He wasn’t going to look at her again, she realized, so she took one last quick glance around the room and then walked to the door, holding it open for him. He slid through it sideways, the trunk between them as he passed. She followed him down the stairs, staring at the back of his head. His hair was the exact opposite of hers, fine and wispy and oily. It was clean, but limp. There were a few grays scattered over the back of his head, and those seemed thicker and wavier. Salt and pepper would look good on him when the balance shifted.

The differences in their ages didn’t seem to matter. They had both lived hard and fast, and packed too much experience into their short lives. They had both seen too much, and done things that sometimes made it hard to look in the mirror. Hers had just been more compacted. They were both trying to pick up the pieces and get by, to be happy in spite of their scars.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was just that he understood.

And then Harry was there, shoving past him and wrapping her up in his arms, swinging her off the stairs with a laugh and kissing her cheek sloppily. She clung to him, ducking her head against his shoulder, and bit back the tears that caught in her throat. “Hermione, love, I was so worried.”

“I’m sorry, Harry,” she said, and then the tears did come and she buried her face against his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“Nah. Shhhh – it’s fine, yeah? I was a terrible friend, I had no idea it was bothering you so much. But you’re all right, and it’s going to be fine. I know you miss them. I miss mine too, but we’re family now. You and I – we’ll always have each other.”

“And me,” Ginny said, wrapping her arms around both of them. “You can’t get rid of us Weasleys that easy. We’re like bulldogs – we don’t let go. Mum’s been beside herself, and Percy and Dad have been working like mad to minimize the damage. And Ron and George were coming up with some stupid plan to break you out of here and smuggle you to Romania if it came to that.”

She laughed against Harry’s chest and shifted, throwing an arm around Ginny and wiping her cheeks with her other arm. “They were going to send me to a dragon preserve? They’re mad.”

Harry squeezed her waist and then stepped away. She looked over his shoulder at Severus, who was watching them with a bland and inscrutable expression on his face. She smiled at him, and he responded with a tight smirk, but it was something. Harry turned to him, walking over and slapping him on the shoulder, which merited a stern glare.

Ginny was saying something about a quiet evening tonight but some gathering at The Burrow tomorrow, and Hermione nodded at all the right places but her attention was diverted to watching Severus and Harry and straining to hear their conversation.

She thought she heard him say “Miss Granger was no trouble” and Harry’s eyes flicked over to her as he smiled softly. There was an invitation to the Burrow which was met with a derisive snort, and then mild insults were exchanged on both sides. But they stood shoulder to shoulder like they were forming a wall, and it reminded her of Fred and George a little. Whatever form of communication the two of them had didn’t have anything to do with words. Words were superfluous to it.

Harry came back to her, took her wrist and held his wand to the torc. Her magic, which had been trapped and still, flowed back through her, and she closed her eyes in dizzy relief. He slipped the bracelet off her wrist and she slipped out her wand, shouted “Expecto Patronum.”

Her otter danced and tumbled around the room.

“Oh thank God,” she whispered, the energy crackling around her, the world buzzing again with the force of magic. She laughed in relief and delight. Ginny and Harry were smiling and bantering, but she looked around them to Severus. His hands were resting lightly on the back of the chair, and there was tenderness in his face she’d never seen before. Her stomach twisted, and she swallowed. Harry shrunk her trunk, tucking it in the pocket of his robes, and said something to Severus. But he didn’t acknowledge it, didn’t remove his eyes from her.

They remained locked as Harry wrapped his forearm around hers, and she felt the twist and crack of Apparition and then Severus was no longer there and she was staring at the fireplace in Grimmauld’s library. Harry rubbed his hand on her back and bumped her shoulder. “I’ll take your trunk up to your room. Kreacher –“

Kreacher popped into the room, and looked at her with distaste. She smiled at him.

“A pot of tea and some biscuits, please,” Harry finished, and then he gave her a reassuring smile and bounded up the stairs. Ginny appeared, an odd expression on her face. She plopped down on the sofa and didn’t say anything until the floorboards creaked and indicated Harry was beyond hearing distance. Then she leaned forward and patted the seat next to her. Hermione sat down.

“What did you do to Snape?” Ginny asked.

“What do you mean?” She flushed.

“He just told me you were easy to have around and warned me to take care of you. Did you drug him?”

Hermione laughed. “No, he was…we had a good time together, actually.”

That was the best way to explain it, she thought. She had been an emotional train wreck and he hadn’t exactly been relaxed, but she’d liked being there.

Ginny was serious all of a sudden. Kreacher appeared with the tea, but it didn’t stop Ginny from leaning over and saying quietly, “Be careful there, Hermione.”

“How so?” Could Ginny see through her? Did she realize that Hermione had developed some sort of fixation – that she hadn’t wanted to leave? Was she about to be lectured about how idiotic it would be to harbor a crush on the Greasy Git?

“Harry would be upset if he got hurt in this. Don’t lead him on, that’s all I’m saying. He doesn’t seem sensitive, but he is.”

Hermione wanted to explore this further, desperately. What had Ginny seen that made her think he was the one in danger when it had actually been the opposite?

But then Harry was back and he was setting out a game of exploding snap and she found herself telling them about her week, about how she’d learned to cook and about his potions research and about her plans to work on Beedle’s tales and Hogwarts: A History. She told them about the proposal Andromeda told her to write and about Severus’s annotated copy of the history, which he’d lent her. It was a strange conversation, but she couldn’t put her finger on why it was strange.

The answer only came to her later, as she was sitting on the bed in her room at Grimmauld holding his book in her hands. It was strange because Harry didn’t seem surprised to learn that he’d left her in good hands. He’d apparently never questioned it – never doubted Severus would pull her through the worst of it and turn it into something productive.

Harry didn’t talk much about their relationship, at least not to Hermione. She knew they’d come to some sort of understanding, but she hadn’t thought it went very deep, especially since she’d only heard them sniping at each other at public functions. But she realized suddenly that the trust between them was absolute.

\|/

He’d achieved his goal, got her out of his house, and only Draco had any sense of the depth of his weakness. He wasn’t sure why he’d turned to him instead of say, Minerva, but he supposed it was because he wanted cool calculation and detachment. He wanted to be able to say, “She’s flirting with me and I’m in danger of tying her to the bed” without a lot of emotional analysis or concern or attempts at empathy.

Draco had just told him that they would do something about getting her out of his house and warned him that he needed to get out more if Granger was starting to seem shaggable. It was exactly the dump of ice he’d needed to feel better, even if young Malfoy left without discussing any plans or strategies.

He’d stayed in the basement and focused on his potions, relieved that she had a book and employment and was unlikely to come looking for him. He’d give her his entire library if she’d just go away.

And then the Potters had showed up on his doorstep to take her home. Harry had some story about Draco having gone to Kingsley sometime around noon demanding a hearing with the Wizengamot. He’d found a way to get her out of his house. Severus hadn’t been able to hide the smirk as he realized that Draco had managed to make himself look like something of a hero – he had risked all to warn his classmate of the danger – and exonerated Hermione and solved the little problem of her being stuck in his house in a single afternoon. Sometimes Draco showed remarkable promise.

It worked precisely because everyone knew that the Malfoys – Narcissa and Draco at least – had been held by Voldemort against their will. Or that was the story, the one that justified Cissy’s Order of Merlin Second Class and Draco being given a slap on the wrist and probation and Lucius getting three years in Azkaban with various concessions like a comfortable private room and a house elf and pleasant human guards.

Life was not fair. If it was the whole lot of them would have been kissed along with the remaining Lestranges and Mulcibers and Goyles. Or been put away like the Averys and the Notts, sent to a harsh place to grow mad under the constant assault of the Dementors. Severus would have a quiet cell and a loud mind because even Occlumency wouldn’t have protected him forever. He would not have a pleasant enough house and a well-paying job where he pretty much made his own rules. Life was not fair; sometimes it was unfairly balanced in your favor and sometimes not.

But you played the hand you were dealt to the best of your ability, and you tried to do the least amount of harm possible. You tried not to take advantage of people but you weren’t stupid about it. Sometimes the system could be played against itself, and as long as no one got hurt by it…it was probably still wrong. But that’s what it meant to be human, after all.

So he’d got what he wanted.

Pussy looked vaguely depressed as she sat on the end of his bed licking her tail. The house was quiet and empty, and it felt cold.

He missed her. She’d been held there against her will, but he missed her all the same.

It was better this way. He really had been in danger.

Far more danger than he’d ever realized, he thought, burying his face in his pillow. It smelled like her, and he had no intention of washing the sheets.

\|/ 

“We’re leaving in fifteen minutes, Harry! Put down the video games and change your clothes!” Ginny was yelling, but it was good-natured.

Hermione was reading about Dilys Derwent. So many passages were crossed out that she had to tilt the book at times to read the corresponding margin notes.

_Total slag, per P.N.B. Slept with Minister, his daughter, and 37 members of the Wizengamot – at the very least – in her long career as a ‘healer’._

Unlike the ones toward the front of the book, these weren’t well-referenced. They were private jokes between two friends. They must have sat there in the office howling over the sorts of things that ended up in history books and how distorted the view always was.

Phineas had been her prisoner, but his friend.

Someday he would be a portrait up on the wall. She wondered what sort of stories he would tell, what aspects of himself he would show to the Headmasters he served.

She tilted the book upside down, to read the very small and cramped scribbles at the bottom.

_“According to who, Phineas? Doesn’t he wish! I wouldn’t have buggered that boy with some wizard’s merry wand, the way he sulked.” – Healer Derwent_

_“Derwent and Black? Shagged like demons, they did, when she was well nigh eighty and he was a young lad of thirty, why on that very desk.” – Fergus McQuarrie, 14 th Headmaster of Hogwarts. Note to self: do not eat on desk_

“Are you ready to go?” Ginny asked, peering into the library. Hermoine looked up from the book, inserting a finger to mark her place. “What are you reading?”

Hermione tilted the book so that Ginny could see it over her shoulder.

“Merlin, can I have it when you’re done? Have you found any good spells yet?”

She laughed and closed the book, trailing her fingers over the cover. “No spells, but he talked to absolutely everyone. Even the stuff Binns said about the Goblin Wars is sort of interesting.”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “You and Snape must be the only people on earth who care what Binns has to say about the Goblin Wars. He put the rest of us normal folk off the subject of history for life.”

“Did you know the castle changes with every Headmaster? It’s like it attunes to who they are. That’s why our seventh year the staircases always sped you on your way when you were trying to get somewhere but didn’t cooperate at all when you were just wandering around – they were keyed to Minerva. Dumbledore seems a little sadistic now that I think about it – they were so random. It was infuriating when you were trying to get to class and they wouldn’t align.”

Ginny sat down next to her. “I guess I’ve never thought about it, but you’re right. Sixth year…it seemed like the castle was working against Snape. He was quiet and kept to his office most of the time, but he was boiling over with rage. He turned it on the castle – he blamed Hogwarts. He had all the access of a Headmaster, but the corridors would open to hide us and sometimes when we were trying to get away from the Carrows or Filch you’d step through a doorway and be somewhere else completely. We almost never got caught, and the lower years especially – it was like the castle wouldn’t let them act out. We got away with things we’d never have gotten away with otherwise. Dumbledore would’ve caught us immediately. All the passages were blocked off but the Room of Requirement, and it appeared all the time.”

“I wasn’t there that year.”

Ginny shook her head and swallowed. “He was very good at making it look like he wasn’t in control of things, but – it wasn’t anything like the Ministry. In hindsight…Percy’s stories – they’re horrible.”

“It kept you safe,” Hermione said.

Ginny shrugged. “He did. It wasn’t like Umbridge – he was in control the whole time. Even during the battle, the sword – everything going in our favor. It only broke down when he did.”

“And then Fawkes – do you really think it was Fawkes?”

Ginny shrugged, thinking for a moment. “I was there in the Chamber of Secrets. Yes.”

“How come you’ve never told me what it was like?”

“Because what you went through was so much worse. We didn’t want to seem like we were complaining, when…”

“I understand.” They all had their own experiences; she didn’t share that one with Ginny. She and Harry didn’t really talk about that year much either, but it was something that bound them together, along with – to a lesser extent – Ron.

Who’d made it clear that they weren’t family when he turned his back on them. In the end, that was why she was glad it hadn’t worked out with him. Harry had treated Ginny like family, trying to protect her and keep her safe. Ron had told her bluntly that he didn’t consider her as such. That was the difference between them. That’s why Harry and Ginny were happily married and Ron was off in France with Gabrielle, a member of his family, while Hermione played third wheel at Grimmauld Place.

She missed Spinner’s End acutely. She had felt at home there. She knew she was welcome at Harry and Ginny’s and that they liked having her there, but there still wasn’t enough room for three in a marriage. She’d liked it better when it was just her and Severus.

She buried her face in her palm and rubbed it over her forehead, sighing. She spoke quietly. “I miss him, Ginny. Snape.”

Ginny rubbed her back. “Did something go on between you?”

“No,” she said quickly, wondering how Ginny would react if something had. “But I think I wanted it to.”

Ginny didn’t say anything. She just continued to rub her back, tracing light little circles over it.

“Does that seem weird?”

Ginny laughed. “Merlin yes, but…also, not really.”

“No?”

“It’s ghastly to imagine, he’s so dour and snarky and…well beauty is skin deep, but you’d have to look at him a lot, wouldn’t you? But if personality and looks aren’t important to you, he is very clever.”

“Frightfully clever, and…I don’t know. It felt like we could talk about anything. And I don’t think he’s unattractive, he’s so intense all the time and…you know what they say about noses.”

“It’s not true, Harry’s very well –“

“God, stop. I shouldn’t have gone there.”

“Well if I have to hear about Snape…do you think he knows what to do? I’m not sure he’s ever gone out with anyone.”

“He reportedly has a very active casual sex life with random muggle women he meets in pubs.”

“Wow. Where’d you hear that?” Ginny sat back. She looked a bit impressed.

“Andromeda. But evidence supports the theory. It wasn’t until I heard that I even thought of him that way. But I thought maybe I was suffering from some sort of Stockholm syndrome – that’s this muggle thing where a hostage falls in love with their captor. But I don’t feel like all my safety’s been taken away…I just miss him. Is that mad?”

“It’s completely mad, but not in the way you’re thinking. It sounds like normal feelings.”

“Right.” She sighed. It wasn’t normal feelings. It was something she’d never felt before. It wasn’t like they were dating or sleeping together or anything of the sort. This was more like how she felt about Harry and Ginny, fond attachment and understanding. But she also felt kind of frustrated and aroused, and in that way it more like how she'd once felt about Ron.

It was a bloody mess, that’s what it was, and she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She looked at her watch. “We should probably see if Harry’s ready.”

Ginny smiled and patted her knee. “Right. HARRY, WE’RE GOING.”

Hermione rubbed her ear, which was ringing.

\|/ 

It would be completely out of character for him to go to The Burrow. That was the problem. He’d gone to George’s wedding, but that was only because Molly had sat in his office and wheedled until she finally wore him down. She’d made refusing to go more unpleasant than sucking it up and enduring a tedious three hours of ridiculous ceremony and boring conversation.

They expected him to refuse the deluge of invitations they offered. It was custom. If they really wanted him there they would leave him with no other option.

How long would it take before she had questions? He supposed he’d hoped that she’d show up on his doorstep with the book in hand, shooting questions at him and probing from the moment he opened the door. He missed her questions, the constant digging around to see what she could find. He’d felt like she understood him and actually liked him anyway.

It never failed to surprise him that people could feel that way. He’d come to a sort of accommodation with himself, but it wasn’t laced with any sort of affection. Self-knowledge marked him as an absurd little bundle of foibles and contradictions, and as kind of a bastard. He knew he wasn’t very good at opening up, and he wasn’t sure why anyone would want him to. He always seemed to do better if he tried to tread the middle ground of his personality and not fall too far toward either extreme. He was a sentimental and romantic idealist, and he was also a cold and calculating bastard. Somehow she made him feel free to be both.

So yes, he missed her. But he would not go to the Burrow. He would wait for her to come to him and eventually he would forget he was waiting. He wouldn’t sit with a book propped on his lap waiting for a knock on the door that wasn’t going to come forever. Life would fall back into its normal pattern.

But she was free. And if she did ever seek him out, even in friendship, it would be of her own free will. That was the most important thing.

No one ever would have forgiven him for taking advantage of her while she was vulnerable. More importantly, he would never have forgiven himself.

He might have gotten a shag out of the whole thing, but the fallout wouldn’t have been worth it. Not remotely.

He looked at the back of his knuckles, remembering how her lips had felt against his cheek and the awkward way she’d stood with his knuckles sliding between her legs. He’d resisted the urge to turn his hand and press his thumb between her legs, but he still thought she might have responded if he had. He could have taken her there on his bed. He could have wound her up and turned so that his erection pressed against her and she would have rubbed herself against him like a cat. He had felt moisture through her skirt and knickers against the back of his hand.

She might even have been so ashamed of it she would have blamed herself rather than him. And he would have got off, and got her off, and she would have gotten up from the bed and put her clothes back on and gone down to Harry and Ginny as if nothing had happened. He never would have seen her again.

He still might not. But at least he’d know that whatever she felt for him wasn’t the unnatural product of circumstances, wasn’t some imbalance of power between the free and the caged.

At least he could live with his choice.

And if, when he tossed off to an image in a magazine and he couldn’t help but see a mole on the inside of the girl’s thigh or her bare legs in a blue skirt or the sight of her covered in sweat and leaning over to pet the cat –

Pussy. He couldn’t believe he’d said that. He couldn’t believe she’d sucked in air and smiled back and flushed with an adult sort of knowingness.

He could’ve taken her. But he couldn’t have, because he…

No, he wouldn’t think that. Anything but that.

It was exactly the opposite sort of situation. There were untold years of misunderstandings between them. A few days of artificial friendship couldn’t grow into that. Wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t let it, dammit.

He should have taken her while he still had the chance. He should have gotten it out of his system. What sort of dunderhead was he, anyway? She was old enough to know her own mind, old enough to make a decision one way or the other.

He imagined how it would have gone if he’d been less of a bleeding idiot. He’d have turned his thumb, pressed it between her legs. He would have ducked his head so that she was kissing his lips, would have opened his mouth against hers and slid his tongue in and spun his hips so that his erection was resting against her arm.

He’d been so hard, and he’d needed to shift the angle, but he’d hidden himself behind her trunk and waited for it to pass. He could have unbuttoned his trousers, or maybe she would have, and he would’ve tugged off her knickers and pulled her down on top of him and kissed her until she worked his pants down and groped around until he was inside her and then he would’ve let her ride him, thrusting and grinding until…

There was a knock on the door. He started and felt suddenly very guilty. He shouldn’t think of such things; it hadn’t happened, and that was for the best.

He tried not to hope that she was at the door, and he told himself that even if she was she wouldn’t be there for sex or anything of the sort and he had better get a grip on himself.

The knocking came again. He paced a little circle, waiting for the arousal and frustration to pass. He needed to be calm. He resorted to occlumency, closing any thought of her firmly out of his conscious mind.

Control your emotions, he thought. That was the first rule of anything. His emotions were a vast reservoir of anger and need and devotion, not necessarily in that order. He had an addictive personality, courtesy of his alcoholic and manic depressive father, but addictions could be controlled.

He wasn’t addicted to Hermione Granger.

He opened the door.

It wasn’t her, but disappointment was followed quickly by alarm. Ginevra was shifting her feet, staring at the mat.

“Is Hermoine all right?” He cursed the words as soon as they’d left his mouth, knowing that he’d given himself away. Knowing that even a Weasley couldn’t be that thick. With a few exceptions, anyway.

Well, he hadn’t done anything to her. He could honestly protest that he hadn’t acted on his feelings, and they couldn’t blame him for liking someone, surely.

It wasn’t as if he wanted to like her.

Ginevra lifted her face up, tilting her head and smiling slowly. “She’s fine. I think she misses having you around, though.”

He stared at her. Surely she wasn’t suggesting…

“I told Harry I was going to come try to convince you to join us. If I win, he’s got to tell mum where she can stuff her stork party ideas. It might be an interesting night.”

“And if you lose?” His voice sounded calmer than he felt, but suddenly his feelings caught up with it and he felt a sort of peace. Whatever this all was, he might actually be up to it.

“I have to give up my nightly foot massage and let him stay up with his video games. He plays them all the time, it’s infuriating.” She held up her hands, mimicking someone holding a controller, a blank stare on their face. “Stupid Muggle toys.”

“Waste of bloody time,” he agreed. That’s why he didn’t have a television. Music was one thing, but…Potter was a lucky little bastard who didn’t deserve such a tolerant wife, and he should be kicked upside the head.

“I know we’re loud, but we don’t bite. You’re always welcome.”

He felt like he was probably reading too much into that statement. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not an intrusion. You’re practically like…another brother. The one who’s an antisocial git. Get your coat. I don’t want the stork party to be as ghastly as the wedding was.”

“I’m glad you recognize that it was horrid.”

She smiled. “It was painful, but nobody wanted to upset her after Fred…it’s been long enough though. She’s got to be stopped.”

“And you think Potter can stop her?”

“Maybe. Like I said, it’s going to be an interesting night.”

 \|/

“Hey Minnie, I’ve got a potion you should try.” George was holding up a chocolate, trying to stuff it into her mouth. She pursed her lips and shook her head, laughing with her mouth firmly closed. “Come on, truth or dare.”

She managed to push him off her and he fell over the edge of the chair. He sat down cross-legged and popped the chocolate into his mouth, chewing loudly. “It’s like veritaserum, ‘cept not near so potent. Snape tested it and said it was legal. You just say whatever’s on your mind without any regard for anyone’s feelings, but you do have some control over it. You should try it – you’re always wound too tight, anyway.”

“Am I?” He’d just admitted to taking a truth potion, and now he was telling her she was uptight. Maybe she ought to listen.

“Like a screw. Stop worrying what other people are going to think. Just try one – when have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Do you want me to list all of the instances?”

He frowned at her. “You’ve got a memory like an elephant.”

“Fine,” she said. She wasn’t uptight; she knew how to have a good time. She held out her hand, and he laid a chocolate on her palm. She brought it to her mouth and bit into it, savoring the flavor. It was very good, so she ate the rest of it. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic. Now, anyway love, as I was asking before that little distraction, just how bad was my brother in bed?”

She laughed. “Not bad, just sort of lazy. Wanted me to do all the work.”

George shook his head. “What a waste. He always was sort of thick.”

She heard a couple of pops behind her, but he glanced over briefly and didn’t seem interested. People were always popping in and out of The Burrow. The door closed behind her and she heard footsteps on the lawn. George was looking at her with a curious expression on his face. “Ginny thinks you might fancy Snape a bit.”

There was something in his eyes that told her the question wasn’t innocent, but he flicked his wand and was gone. And George’s smile was like a Cheshire Cat’s; it lingered after he disappeared.

She turned to find Severus standing in the doorway with his wand in his fist and a murderous expression on his face. “I’m going to kill Weasley.”

“What are you doing here?” That was really the only question she wanted an answer to. He never came to The Burrow.

He tucked his wand back into his sleeve and looked at her blankly, the anger draining out of his face and replaced by a totally empty mask. “Mrs. Potter said that there was a wager on whether or not she could get me here.”

He spoke slowly, like he was trying to arrange his words in the correct order. Like he was trying to tell the truth in a certain way.

Maybe it was the potion. Maybe it was just that she didn’t want this to go on indefinitely; she wanted to know where they stood.

“I do, you know.” She ducked her head and she shifted so that she was sitting back in the chair, facing away from him. She wanted it to be easier for him to leave. “Fancy you.”

“Did you take something?” There was a bit of disapproval or disbelief in his voice, she wasn’t sure which.

She shrugged. “I ate one of George’s chocolates, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

She felt his eyes on the back of her head, but he didn’t come any closer. He didn’t leave, either, though.

“You’ve had a very trying week,” he said quietly.

She groaned. “God, don’t patronize me. I’m not asking you for anything. I’m just trying to warn you that they’re…”

“Going to abandon us in what appears to be Arthur’s shed and force us to have a rather awkward conversation.”

“Right.” That was pretty much it.

“Thank you for the warning.” He sounded amused.

“Yeah, no problem.” She wasn’t going to turn around and look at him. She didn’t want to ask for anything he didn’t want to give.

He didn’t say anything for a long time, but she felt a flash of magic behind her and she knew he had locked the shed. Her heart pounded in her chest. He walked over and sat down next to her in the other Adirondack. They were both facing Arthur’s car, and there was a little table between them.

“My God,” he said, “They sit around and stare at a vehicle.”

She giggled. “I know.”

“There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose. Or lack thereof.”

“I like them, though. They’re a bit weird, but…”

“We’re all weird.”

“In our own particular ways.”

He cleared his throat. She didn’t dare look at him, and she knew that he was still studying the car in order to avoid looking at her. “I don’t know how this is supposed to work.”

“Pardon?” She felt like he’d had part of that conversation in his head, possibly the most crucial part. She thought she understood it, but she needed more than that. She glanced over at him just in time to see him swallow and duck his head behind his hair.

“Fancying each other.” He said it so quietly as to leave some doubt as to whether she had actually heard what she thought she had. She glanced down at the box of chocolates sitting on the table, and then back up at his wall of hair. She plucked one of them out of the box, and then got out of the chair on her knees and scooted the meter or so to where he sat. He looked alarmed; he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, still not really looking at her. The chair held him in a reclining position, and that was to her advantage. She shoved her hips between his knees, and he didn’t fight her very hard. She held the chocolate in front of his nose, and he looked at it as if she were offering him the apple off the tree.

“You’ve got an unfair advantage right now. Eat the chocolate.”

He glared at it. “You’re out of your bloody mind. I’m not going to eat that.”

She shoved it toward his mouth as George had done with her, roughhousing, but she didn’t have her elbow around his neck. She reached to follow his duck with the chocolate, trying to keep it close to his mouth, and tumbled across his lap. Her knee propped against the edge of the chair, between his legs, and her hip was pressed against something hard and solid. With a painful awareness that she was playing dirty, she stretched out over him, pinning his chest under her elbow. Her hipbone ground against him, and she straddled his thigh. He stilled completely underneath her, and she could feel the blood throbbing in his erection, even through their clothes. She bit back a moan. “Eat it.”

“No.”

She rocked herself against him. Her skirt slid up even further, and he twitched inside his jeans, and she knew that he could feel the moisture through her knickers as she ground herself against his hip. Her face was resting against his shirt, and she was panting. She bit at his chest through the fabric, and he moaned. “Severus, eat.”

And then suddenly his mouth was around her fingers and he wasn’t chewing it but melting it in his mouth, sucking on it and laving it between her fingers. She hooked her index finger under his tongue and pushed herself up on her elbow, shifting so that her knees were splayed against his thighs. She felt one of his hands sliding around the back of her hip, and the other he pushed down between them, adjusting himself. He unbuttoned his jeans, sliding them down enough that his erection was free. She pulled her fingers out of his mouth and shoved her own hand between them, pulling his pants up and over his shaft. His breath caught as her fingers closed over him, stroking it. It was soft and hard all at the same time. He was trying to pull her knickers off, and he shifted his hips underneath her. She felt his breath against her ear, coming in soft little gasps.

She didn’t want to take her knickers off. There was something erotic about the fact that they were fully clothed. More importantly, she didn’t need to take her knickers off; her body already shook in a multitude of little tremors. The elastic of his pants was all twisted around his balls, and she could feel him twitching under her hand. She pulled her knickers to one side with her thumb and adjusted his shaft so that the head of it was wedged against her. If he pulled out, her knickers would slide back into place. She didn’t move. She let him make the choice. He shifted slightly, settling himself a little more securely against her, the head completely submerged. His shaft twitched again, and both of them moaned. And then one of his hands was against the small of her back and the other one sought her face. He pinched her jaw between his fingers and turned her head so that her mouth was against his cheek. He remained seated just inside her. “This is better than all of my fantasies.”

He turned his head, and opened his mouth against hers and sucked her lip between his teeth. He tasted like chocolate, and coffee, and something like butterbeer. Her tongue slid over his upper lip and then hooked underneath it, and then she choked back a breath as he shoved his hand down the front of her robes and thrust up inside her. He worried her lip between his teeth.

And then she stopped having the presence of mind to note either of their actions or reactions. His fingers were rolling her nipples or rubbing against her clit or trailing over her hip, and hers were doing something similar or completely different but there was pleasure and pain and need and his sharp pubic bone dug against her as she rocked over him. They were kissing or licking or panting against each other’s mouths, stealing breath and names and sighs and swallowing them whole. She wanted to be inside him and all over him and he was already seated inside her as deep as anyone could go but it wasn’t enough and she rocked herself harder against him. She wanted him to take all of her and never let go, to hold onto her somewhere inside himself like she was holding onto him. He was buried inside her but they were both of them turned inside out, and then she came apart around him and it didn’t matter because she couldn’t hold him because she was shattering apart around him and clawing at his shoulders and moaning into his throat. He bucked his hips three or four times in quick succession, forming her name through his clenched teeth one syllable at a time. Her. Mi. O. Ne. The last was something of a keen. He tucked his face against her ear and pulled her into an embrace, and she snuggled against his chest as he grew soft inside of her.

She giggled. “So the fancying each other. I think we just play it by ear.”

“It’s so intense. I’m not sure how to control it.”

“I think we just let it ride its course. It’ll wear off eventually.”

“And then what?”

She buried her fingers in his hair and closed her eyes. She’d be all right if they just laid there forever. “I don’t know. Some people apparently set up shrines to automobiles. Harry and Ginny argue about his video games. Kingsley and Andromeda probably worry about Teddy and make major decisions about the future of the country.”

He was quiet, but his hand was tracing a pattern along her spine. His lips pressed against her neck softly. “We should get you to the house before they start speculating about what we’re doing out here.”

“God, no. I just want to go home right now. I’ve had enough noise for a while.”

“Back to Grimmauld, or –“

“With you, if you’ll have me there.”

“For how long?”

“Until you ask me to leave. Or until we decide to go somewhere else.”

She wouldn’t ask him to make vows. They were dangerous in his case since he never broke them. She wouldn’t bind him against his will. His arms tightened around her as he slipped out of her, soft and sticky. “Aren’t you worried about what your friends will say?”

“No. Are you?”

“Why would I be? They aren’t my friends.”

“You’re so full of shit. And our friends have made it perfectly clear they’re all right with it.”

He pulled out his wand, and then they were spinning and the world cracked. They landed a moment later in the middle of his bed. She was still splayed out over him. “Impressive.”

He rolled her off him onto her back and propped himself up on an elbow, studying her face. He grinned at her. “I’ve never been able to use to magic. This is going to be fun.”

She blushed and ducked her head against his shoulder. She was clothed, but she felt utterly bare under the heat of his perusal. “You’ve never been with a witch before?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, but a dark shadow passed over his face. “Not because I wanted to be.”

“Oh.” Some things were better left alone, untold. Not because she couldn’t bear to hear them, but because there was no need to say them. That was the past; they were different people now.

She reached her hand up, sliding it along his jaw, and then she cupped his cheek in her palm. Maybe he wasn’t handsome, but there was a pattern to the juxtaposition of his angles that made him beautiful. Ron was generally thought to be handsome, but he’d used it against her to make her feel inferior and his looks hadn’t really held her interest once they became a weapon.

She was safe from that, at least. She was safe from everything between these walls. He turned his face in her hand and kissed her palm, and his eyes fluttered closed. “Did you ever think…?”

“Not in a million years. I’d never have agreed to take you if I had, and I was horrified. I’d promised to take care of you and all I wanted to do was shag you rotten.”

“Well then why didn’t you? I thought nursing a hopeless crush on you was just further proof I’d lost the plot. You blew so hot and cold and it was like you wanted to do something about it but even that was against your will.”

“God, I wanted you,” he murmured against her hand. His fingers were playing over her hips, and his thumb was pressed against the mole on her thigh. Her skirt covered most of his hand and his wrist. She brought the pad of her thumb up against his lips and let him lick it. Her nail flicked against his teeth.

She wasn’t tired at all. She was wide awake, and her blood was thudding in her veins.

He sat up and began tugging at her shoes, sliding them off and dropping them to the floor. He unzipped her skirt and tugged it off with her knickers, and there was just enough light left from the dusk that she knew he could see her in detail. She flushed as he studied her, dragging his fingers up her legs with the lightest of touches.

He tilted his head and met her eyes as his fingers flew up and began undoing the buttons of his shirt. “I wanted you here of your own volition. Because you choose to be.”

She sat up, pulling her shirt and bra over her head with a tug. She laid back down, baring her flesh to him entire. His eyes glittered as they raked over her, and she swallowed. She tried to smile, but it felt lopsided. “I feel like I fit here. I think I’ve fallen in love with you.”

His fingers froze, tangled in his shirt. He blinked quickly and looked away.

She closed her eyes and held her breath.

\|/

It had sounded like a death knell, like the bell tolling. It rang in his ears and bounced around there, echoing off the empty chambers of his heart.

He hated that word. It was an anathema, either too strong or too weak to actually mean anything.

He was addicted to her. He would die for her, but he’d rather live with her.

He hoped, but didn’t necessarily believe, that she’d never want to leave.

Is that what the word meant? He thought it was bandied about much too casually. Past the age of about six, he’d never thought to use it.

Care was about as far as he was willing to go.

He looked down at her as his fingers began to move again, unclasping the last button and tugging off his shirt. His pants and trousers were still bunched around his hips, but he stood up and shoved them toward the floor, toeing off his socks.

Naked, he laid down beside her on the bed. She was flat on her back with her eyes closed. He wasn’t sure she was breathing.

He skittered his fingers across her stomach and the muscles clenched as she sucked in a breath. She still didn’t open her eyes.

If he was hard, he would’ve coaxed her legs open and buried himself in her, but he was forty-five years old. It would take longer than that to recover.

She wouldn’t ask him to say the word. She might even understand why he didn’t. He watched the path of his hand as he traced over her ribs, between her breasts and over her clavicle. Her breaths came quicker, and her eyes closed more tightly. She wadded the blanket in her fists and arched a little off the bed.

It was extraordinary. He’d never seen anything like it. He’d had quick and fevered and fun, but he’d never had someone lay there passively in his bed and let him explore the contours of their skin.

He wouldn’t have wanted to, probably. It would have felt like work; he wouldn’t have cared enough to mark each expression as it crossed over their features, to vary the pressure of his touch minutely in exploration. He’d learned to be a master but he’d never savored his mastery or cared so much about one particular result.

He traced back down. His thumb traced the path around an aureole and then he skidded it across the tight and pointed nipple. She moaned softly. He continued to flick this thumb back and forth while he lowered his head to her other breast and drew that one into his mouth. He opened his mouth wide and sucked deeply, grinding his tongue against the peak. She moaned and arched into him, her fingers clawing uselessly at the bed. He continued to suck on her, breathing through his nose. He pinched the other nipple hard between his fingers and she cried out, her hand clawing at his shoulder. She shifted her hips and spread her legs open, and with a soft kiss he slid his mouth off her breast and studied it. It was purple and bruised, and the nipple was blood red and wet with his saliva. He blew on it softly, and smiled as she shivered and moaned.

She’d offered him her heart in place of his own, but it wasn’t quite fair because he hadn’t told her he’d already lost his.

Maybe that’s what the word meant. Hold this thing for me, because I don’t have anywhere else to put it. It’s grown too big for my chest. Protect it, because I don’t like leaving it exposed. But he’d never said the word past the age of six, and he wasn't sure he knew what it meant. To love someone meant to hurt them, betray them, murder them, didn't it?

He scooted himself down so his shoulder was tucked against her hip. She buried one of her hands in his hair, stroking it softly, and splayed her thighs, tugging the knee opposite him up and hanging her foot off the edge of the bed. Because he’d wanted to do it earlier, he led with his knuckles, running his fist over her belly and sliding it into the slit between her thighs. She was so wet, sticky from their earlier activity but also slick with new moisture. She wanted him, by God, desperately. The proof was all over his hand. He opened his fist and pushed two of his fingers inside her, flicking at her clit with his thumb. She bucked up into his hand, moaning as he hooked his fingers against the base of her public bone.

He knew the mechanics, but what flayed him was the intimacy of the position. She still hadn’t opened her eyes that he knew of, and she wasn’t waiting for his response. She was just laying herself open to his touch. He twisted and dug his fingers and she tugged his hair rather painfully in response. His groin twitched.

Maybe he wasn’t going to need such a long time to recover after all. He stretched his neck out and pulled her apart with his thumb, and then he covered the nub of her clit with his mouth. He laved his tongue against it and sucked and nibbled as his fingers rubbed faster against the creases just below her cervix. She moaned and tugged harder at his hair, and her legs twitched each time he pressed his thick tongue against the crest of her hood. He could taste the blood just below her skin and he ground his jaw into her mound, trying to suck her inside his mouth without dislodging his hand.

He felt her spasm around his fingers, drawing them up inside her, and he lapped at her until they began to subside. With each one, she’d tugged sharply against his hair, and the pain mixing with her little cries of pleasure had coaxed his own arousal back to the surface.

He crawled up her body and studied her face as she came down from the summit of her pleasure, and she opened her eyes. He licked his lips, tasting her, and then bent down and thrust his tongue into her mouth. He kissed her deeply, and his shaft bobbed against the cleft of her thighs. Her legs were still spread wide, and he was sprawled between them. But he rolled off her and propped himself again on an elbow. Her wide mouth was curled up in a little smile of pleasure, and her eyes were hooded. Her lips were red and parted and her hair spread out in a wild halo over his pillow.

He’d never said the word. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever known what it meant, still.

But the whole world thought he had, in relation to someone he’d once cared for a long time ago, and sometimes thought he’d wanted. There had been real affection between them before lust and need and greed had crept in with adolescence. He hadn’t had any experience then, hadn’t known what he was asking for.

He’d certainly never seen Lily splayed out before him and known that she’d given herself over to him. Hermione’s body was his for the taking, and he wanted to claim it. “Roll over.”

There was a question in her eyes, but she tucked her shoulder and rolled. She lay flat on her stomach for a moment, but then she tucked her knees up under her hips and pushed them off the bed, kneeling with her arms laid flat against the bed and her face pressed into the pillow. He trailed his hand over the curve of her spine, marveling at the tiny bones and the way she trembled beneath his touch. He stopped when he reached the base of her spine, laying his palm flat against the small of her back. He held his mouth close to her ear. “I need you. I want you. It’s as close to love as I’ve ever come.”

She turned her head, peeking out at him from beneath the bush of her hair. She smiled at him. “I don’t care what we call it.”

“You were very particular about what we call the cat,” he pointed out. He thought she bloody well did care, but was trying to set him at ease. He wouldn’t be patronized by her; it was best to set that ground rule early.

She looked lazy and unperturbed, and she was still smiling. Her hips were still in the air, as if she was waiting for him to get on with things.

“I just wanted you to call her something. Hearing you say Pussy Galore was beyond my wildest expectations.”

“Harlot.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re the one that goes out to sleazy pubs. Pervert.”

“Not really,” he answered. “There just wasn’t any opportunity to do this with someone I like.”

“Love,” she corrected. There was an assurance in her eyes that he didn’t quite trust. It was if she knew something he didn’t.

He pushed himself up to his knees and scooted behind her. Her breasts were pressed against the mattress, but lightly; he could see a bit of pink against the white blanket. Above that, the wide crease between her thighs gaped open. Her waist flared like a guitar, and her spine traveled up like frets.

He hardened with the need to play her, possess her. To be possessed. To be helpless with yearning, to stand at the edge of the abyss and fall together. Was it love?

Did he care what they called it?

He slid one of his fingers between her folds, watching as she clenched. Her hips twisted a little as he flicked his nail against her clit. But he was teasing himself now as much as her. He throbbed with the tension, and all the blood felt like it had been drained from his brain.

It occurred to him that she hadn’t made him wear a condom. He had come inside her, and she hadn’t much cared. He supposed that should alarm him, except he knew she was generally very responsible and even if she’d just had a lapse the thought of her slouching toward Bethlehem with the weight of his seed didn’t bother him as much as it should have.

He took himself in hand and rubbed the head of head his shaft up over her clit, grinding it against her. She relaxed and he pushed his finger all the way inside her and then drew it out. He thrust up inside her, hooking his arm around her hip to rub her clit. He found it and rolled it between his knuckles as he thrust into her, and when she was tensing and moaning and groaning his name he slid out and let momentum work for him as he jammed his finger against the tighter hole. He thrust into her again, and she moaned, pushing back against him. She yielded, and he slid his finger inside her ass to the base of his knuckles. He didn’t thrust, but she pulsed around him and then erupted into a series of spasms which rocked her shoulders. She moaned his name, and her muscles clenched and released and carried him over into his own release. He felt more drained with each pulse, and he knew that he was collapsing heavily across her back. He rolled off and fell into a boneless heap, staring up vacantly at the ceiling. “I can die now.”

She giggled and shifted, stretching out beside him. “I need a shower.”

He waved his wrist casually. “Help yourself.”

He closed his eyes. The room smelled like sex and he could hear her breathing next to him. Somewhere downstairs Pussy let out a little mewl, and he could hear the clock ticking in the kitchen.

This was the closest to heaven he might ever get. He was going to savor it.

\|/

Pussy was curled on her lap, and she was sitting up with the pillow tucked under arm, her fingers scratching under the cat’s chin. He was snoring softly – light little hitches rather than deep rumbles. Beams from the streetlights slanted in through the windows making little crescents on the sheets.

She was sore all over, and she couldn’t believe the things she’d allowed him to do. What was he going to think of her in the morning?

She’d laid herself open because she trusted him not to steer them wrong. Words were not cheap to him; he weighed them carefully. For this reason, and many others, she trusted him completely.

It seemed mad to risk her heart so soon, mad to proclaim that she didn’t want to leave. But what more did she need to see? She knew he was safe as houses; the only surprises had been that they were so compatible, and the intensity of the sexual attraction.

There was nowhere else she’d rather be. He would treat her kindly and wouldn’t hurt her if he could avoid it, but he would also push her out of her comfort zone and sharpen her.

It wasn’t difficult. It was just scary as hell. Because he was passionate and knowing and bent on pleasure, and he had already set a bar that couldn’t easily be measured up to.

She had bruises from where he had marked her, love bites on her right breast and her neck. And he had scrapes where her nails had dug into him. It wasn’t tame, this thing between them. It was feral and dangerous and needed to be handled with care. She traced her fingers over the tattoo on his neck and the one on the inside of his left forearm. He didn’t shift or start, so she let her fingers caress the plane of his cheek and the bridge of his long nose. She ran the tips of her nails across his lips, and then he moaned slightly and leaned toward her. His leg hooked more firmly around hers.

Play it by ear. She could do that.

\|/ 

He woke with a stiffie as usual. The difference was that there was a woman wrapped around him and an easy way to dispense with it. He decided that it wouldn’t be worth it, though. He’d always had more interest than opportunity, so he hadn’t often turned anything down when it was on offer. But now he suspected his abilities were not up to the task. Pleasure was going to have to be carefully rationed.

Her head was resting on his shoulder and her lips were pressed against his skin. She was asleep and still wound around him like a vine. She was in his bed and his house and his life, and it wouldn’t be easy to excise her. Also, he didn’t want to her to leave.

He wouldn’t have wanted this with anyone else. He still wasn’t sure what made her so different. He had always kept the two concepts – friends and sexual partners – well divided into two separate camps. The one time he had considered trying to combine them it hadn’t worked out very well for him.

He felt vulnerable, and terrified. He didn’t know what to do with her. He wasn’t worth putting this kind of faith in, but she was difficult to dissuade. He’d taken her a bit farther than he meant to last night, probably because he’d wanted, on some level, to warn her. Did she really know what she was taking on? He scared himself, sometimes.

Most of the time.

He didn’t want to fail her, or disappoint her. He wanted her to be happy. Strangely enough, she claimed to be happy with him.

Eventually, of course, one of the adults was going to arrive and put a stop to this. Even if Ginevra and George had encouraged it, they were young and high-spirited. Someone was going to demand to know what his intentions were at the very least.

He needed to prepare some possible answers, a few different ones depending on who they sent as emissary.

He preferred Shacklebolt to Arthur if he was going to be allowed a choice in the matter, and Andromeda to both. The prospect of Minerva being called in was ghastly. Thank God term was in session. It made her involvement more unlikely.

Hermione didn’t shift or wake as he dressed, and he didn’t really want her to. The longer she stayed asleep the longer he would have a clear head. Once she awoke, he wasn’t sure what would happen.

He made toast and coffee, and paced around the tiny kitchen. Pussy watched him with a great deal of disdain. He knew what she thought of him, and he agreed.

He jumped when he heard the rap on the door, even though he’d been expecting it. He crossed through the sitting room and opened the door.

Potter was staring at the moulding around the front door. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, his glasses sliding down his nose. “Morning, Snape.”

“Potter.” The greeting was automatic, meaningless. The less he said, the better off he would be. Only direct questions demanded a reply.

“Can we go for a walk?”

“Excuse me?” It was apparently going to be worse than he thought. They hadn’t sent an adult at all.

“Unless you don’t have company?” Potter had turned, staring at the security fence around the cabbage factory with a look of contrived fascination.

He stepped out on the stoop and closed the front door behind him. They began to walk without any real purpose, both of them looking at the graffiti and the trash and the old brick and new concrete to avoiding looking at each other. Potter’s hands were still stuffed in the pockets of his coat, and Severus wished he’d grabbed a jacket. The autumn air cut through his jumper and it was chilly this time of morning.

Potter ducked into an alley and headed for the canal. A running path had been cut through the trees at the edge, and there were benches along the path. Mums sauntered past with babies in joggers and couples were out for early strolls. Both of them leaned against the back of a bench and stared out at the water.

Severus wondered if Potter was ever going to speak, or if they were just going to wander around for a while and wind up back at his house without having resolved anything.

“Here.” The boy was handing him something; there was a small box held in his outstretched palm.

It was her trunk, shrunken. He took it. He didn’t have a coat and his trouser pockets were too tight for it, so he held it awkwardly at his side.

After a few minutes, Potter shrugged. “It makes sense.”

He thought there should probably be a lot more questions because nothing about it made any sort of sense whatsoever. They were all mad; the foxes were guarding the henhouse if they were going to let him get away with this. He snorted. “No, it doesn’t.”

Potter smiled. “Women never make sense, mate. That’s just part of it.”

He wasn’t going to respond to that. It was just too far. He and Potter weren’t friends, not like that. “Is there any purpose to this stroll? I’ve got a pot of coffee on.”

“No. I can apparate back from here. Just come over for dinner some night, right? We miss her.”

He nodded. He understood that; he wasn’t unwilling to share. Sneaking out without saying goodbye had been her idea, but he wouldn’t turn snitch on her.

“See you around.” Potter looked around to make sure no one was in sight and then spun away. Severus glanced down at the trunk in his hand and then began the walk home. He opened the front door quietly in case she was still asleep, but she was the first thing he saw when stepped into the sitting room. She was tucked in one of the leather chairs wearing a transfigured dress that buttoned all the way down and her hair was tumbling over her back. She had a book propped on her lap, and a cup of coffee sat on the side table. She smiled when she saw him, and his heart twisted in his chest. He held the trunk up and then tossed it next to her mug. “Potter brought your things over.”

“I know. I heard you talking on the stoop.”

He didn’t know what to do with himself, so he sat down in the other chair, crossing his legs. He wasn’t sure how morning-after conversation was supposed to go. How were you supposed to be honest when you didn’t know which side was up? They had both said and done things that made them vulnerable, and he couldn’t brush it off as the influence of a potion. “Do you care what he said?”

She was looking at him patiently, with a strange expression on her face. “Not really. Unless you want to tell me.”

“He said it makes sense.”

Her lips quirked up at the corners. He wondered if he was allowed to touch her. This would somehow be easier if he could touch her. “That’s what I always think about Harry and Ginny. They just make sense. She knows him really well and she still looks up to him, and that’s what he needs.”

She didn’t make any comparison, but he could trace the outlines.

He blew out a long breath and took a sip from her mug. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Me neither.”

“Thank God.” He smiled quickly, brushing at a bit of dust on his trousers. “What do you want to do today?”

“I want to go out for lunch, and dinner. I’m bloody sick of cooking.”

He raised an eyebrow. “If you’re going to be expensive to keep, you’ll need to get a job. I’m not independently wealthy, as you may have realized.”

“I have a trust. We can afford a few luxuries.”

He stared at her. He could vaguely recall the look on Potter’s face when she would sit and blather on about holidays in France, totally oblivious of the class difference to the point of casual cruelty. She still didn’t seem to think it mattered. “You realize that even by muggle standards I am vastly unsuitable for you, don’t you?”

She reached for his hand, and he let her entwine her fingers through his. “Can we agree not to do this? I just want to live my life. If this works for us, then it works. But I don’t want to waste a lot of time worrying about it.”

He smiled; he’d heard many women liked to sit around and talk about how they were feeling at precisely that moment, and it seemed he’d dodged a bullet there. “All right. You want to eat out. Is that all?”

“I want to see Lancashire. Take me out. Show me around.”

His shoulders relaxed. He could do all the things she was asking. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

\|/ 

His neighborhood was a strange mixture of classes and ethnicities. She loved the diversity of it, the older working class people and the younger creatives and the little clusters of women in headscarves. He was a rarity; most of his generation had drifted away. He’d been eccentric enough to stay. And elsewhere for much of the time until recently.

Most of her cousins lived in neighborhoods like this, where they could afford to own property and put down roots. She was comfortable in it, despite the razor wire around warehouses and the exhaust from the vans. They ate shwarma at the local curry shop and gossiped about people they knew. He seemed surprised that Ginny had played matchmaker between them, and surprised that Draco had been so creative in coming up with a solution. He was surprised to learn that she had been jealous of his trip to the pub. She was pretty sure, from the slightly guilty look on his face, that he’d been successful in his mission. She didn’t actually care anymore, but she didn’t tell him that.

That was the strangest thing. She didn’t seem capable of blundering into wounding him or pissing him off. She knew when to close her mouth, and she could.

They walked together, sometimes holding hands and sometimes not. Their conversation ranged all over the map, skipping and jumping from magic to alchemy to Hogwarts to politics to philosophy. She was excited to learn that he knew a lot of things she didn’t, and vice versa. Their curiosity had taken them down different paths, but there were points that intersected. And she was curious, curious to map and classify what she already knew by instinct, to give heft and weight to her outline of who he was.

He was possessive, his hands drifting to her constantly in casual little touches, but she didn’t feel that he was doing it to show off. He seemed just to want to keep her close, and when she wandered too far he would catch up to her, draw her back into his orbit.

The leaves were beginning to change and there was a chill in the air; a few more weekends and it would be too cold to stroll so casually. She tucked her hand under his arm and leaned against his shoulder, weaving as their unmatched strides clashed together. He turned her in his arms and slid his hands around her waist, drawing her against him.

Her breath caught. She wanted him to kiss her, but not here, not in public. He didn’t, instead bending toward her ear and saying, “Let’s go to the Leaky for dinner.”

She rested her chin against his shoulder. “We’ll need to go home and change first.”

“No we don’t.” His thumbs were pressed into her hipbones, and he rubbed them in little circles. She went weak in the knees and wondered how he knew to do that. It was like turning a switch.

“We’re in muggle clothes and it’s Sunday and people will talk – are you prepared for that?”

She arched into his touch, trying to keep herself from rubbing up against him. Didn’t she have any self-control?

“Krum got his name in the paper. Why shouldn’t I?”

She was panting and a bit glazed as he snaked his arm around her waist. They spun and a moment later they were at the end of the Alley, standing next to the Ministry fountain. He stepped away from her quickly, but steadied her with a hand on the small of her back. Her knees were still weak. He flicked his wand and summoned his Patronus, and the doe bounded away with a leap. There weren’t many people in the courtyard, but heads turned at the sight of a Patronus, and she heard someone exclaim his name. She was surprised he was willing to risk drawing attention to himself, but she let him guide her forward with his hand still splayed on her waist. “Where’s your flat, exactly?”

“Above Fortescue’s,” she whispered, suddenly aware that her bed was very near and that actually she wasn’t all that hungry. “We don’t have to eat.”

He chuckled; the rumbles sent shivers down her spine. “We’re meeting the Potters for a pint and a light meal, and then the evening is ours.”

So that’s where the Patronus had gone. He was far too confident just to be acting on some whim.

“What are we doing?”

“If we don’t hide, they’ll decide there’s nothing interesting and move along. Otherwise they’ll be trying to prove or disprove a vicious rumor, and then they’ll be watching me.”

“They’re going to ask questions,” she said, pointing out the obvious.

“No they won’t. They don’t want details.”

She thought he had it backwards, and he hadn’t considered the potential fallout, but she wasn’t reluctant to be seen with him. She fancied him, and she didn’t care who knew it. And if he didn’t care if everyone knew that he fancied her, that was his decision. She let him open the door for her at the Leaky, let him take her coat and hang it up on the hook beside his own. He coaxed her over to a chair at an open table under the stairs, and she saw people glance up at them and then do a double take and study them more closely. She felt like they were being inspected.

It felt that way with Harry sometimes too, and they usually just tried to shut everything else out. He sat down beside her after holding her chair, and she gave him the entirety of her attention. She reached for his hand under the table and grabbed it, and his thumb wrapped around her wrist. His eyes were scanning the room, glaring at anyone who had the temerity to glance their way, and she didn’t know what to say. Finally, she sighed. “Why is this so awkward?”

His gaze flicked to her, and the smile he gave her was tight and quick. The baleful sneer was back in place a moment later, though. He spoke without really moving his lips. “It’s always awkward. How is this different?”

She realized he really disliked attention for someone who wanted to be the center of it. He assumed they were all talking about him, and his face was a mask. She scooted closer to him, budging her shoulder against his. His lips quirked then, and he ducked a smirk at her.

So he was still there, under it. Hannah came over with the tray. She seemed to be trying not to look at them, staring at the table instead. “What are you having, Hermione?”

“Let’s have a pitcher of butterbeer – Harry and Ginny are on their way. And a couple of baskets of chips for now. How are you?”

“And a bottle of firewhiskey for Potter and I,” he cut in before she could answer. Hannah nodded and scooted away, darting nervous little glances over her shoulder.

“Why do you get to have firewhiskey and I don’t?”

“Ginevra can’t drink it in her condition. If you want to get pissed this evening, you can share my glass.”

“There’s Harry now,” she said, suddenly nervous. It seemed like a situation that had the potential to go south rather quickly. She clutched his hand more tightly under the table. Ginny moved ahead, weaving around the tables and sliding into the chair next to Severus. Harry had stopped to talk to someone; he was shaking their hand.

“Hey Snapes,” Ginny said brightly, ducking her shoulder so Hannah, who was standing behind her, could put the drinks and chips on the table. When Hannah froze, Ginny reached up and grabbed the tray, unloading the contents. She held it back up over her shoulder and grabbed a chip, and then she seemed to realize that no one was moving. “What? It’s shorter that way.”

“Really, Miss Weasley? Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

“Pretty much,” she said around a chip, taking a swig of the butterbeer and rolling her eyes, a gesture that elicited a tiny smirk from Severus. Hermione sat watching them in fascination. Ginny wasn’t intimidated by her former Headmaster at all. Hermione still found him so overpowering that it was hard to fathom such utter nonchalance. She responded to him in different way now, that was true, but it still surprised her. Ginny leaned over toward Severus, propping her elbows on the table. “Now do you want to hear what mum said or not? Cast a muffliato.”

By the time Harry joined them, Severus and Ginny were gossiping like a couple of old women, poking fun at practically all of her family. Harry laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder and took a sip of whiskey, nodding with approval. He smiled at Hermione across the table. She smiled back.

And somehow it all worked. The people in the Leaky disappeared around them, and they laughed and chatted until the butterbeer and chips and the later pies were gone, and the firewhiskey was down to a quarter of a bottle. She’d taken a couple of long sips from his glass, and she was a little squiffy and giggly and terribly content. Harry polished off the last bite of pie and waved to Hannah for the bill.

There was a small scuffle as Severus and Harry shoved piles of galleons back and forth at each other before coming to some sort of silent agreement on who should pay for what, and she wasn’t sure how they managed to resolve it without speaking.

Ginny pulled her into a quick hug when they got up from the table. “Take care.”

“I’ll come see you,” she promised.

“They’ll be at work tomorrow, so stop by whenever.”

“All right,” she said, jostling past someone coming the opposite direction as they tumbled through the door onto the street. She felt a hand at her back as Harry scooted around her, wrapping his wife in a hug. Ginny giggled and they popped away, and then the hand slid all the way around her waist and he was embracing her from behind outside the Leaky. “Your place or mine?”

He whispered it into her ear, and she tried not to shiver. “Will Pussy be all right?”

He took the high road, but he pressed close enough against her back that she felt him harden. “She’ll be fine. Lead on.”

He kept an arm around her waist as she led him up the street. She tapped her wand against the wards and he followed her up the narrow stairs to the landing; she pushed open the door and led him into her flat, and a quick flick of her wand turned on the lamps. He pulled her back against him again and laid his chin on her shoulder, surveying the room. It was all done in pale yellows and bright golds, and she wondered if he thought it frightfully cheery. She glanced over at the table in the corner, and the little brown shrub on it. “Shit. I’ve killed another hibiscus. Neville is going to strangle me.”

“He’d better not,” he growled, jerking her back even further so that her hips rolled and he could wedge his knee between hers. His fingers fumbled at the buttons of her sweater, and then he was tugging it back over her shoulders and tossing it over the sofa. His hands dug into her clavicle and he sucked at the back of her neck.

“Now,” he murmured, rocking against her. He hooked his hands on her hips and let her lead them to her bedroom. She wasn’t going to turn on the light, but he’d paid attention and he was the one to cast the spell. She moved toward the dresser to turn down all the photos of Harry and Ron and her family, but he pulled her hand back and tucked it against her side. “Leave them.”

He pinned her arms as he fumbled with the hem of her dress, unbuttoning it from the bottom up. She leaned her shoulders against him and arched her back, closing her eyes and surrendering to his ministrations. He was possessive and fevered and touched her as if he had rights to her body; the wary awe of the previous evening was gone. There was no hesitation, no pausing to gauge her reaction, but rather an unwavering assault. He alternated between laving and sucking on her neck, and he didn’t pull her dress out away from her body to unbutton it but tangled his fingers between the plackets and drug them against her skin.

His erection dug against the the flare of her hip, and he stepped away from her only long enough to peel her dress away and toss it on the floor at the foot of the bed. She stole the opportunity to turn around, and raised up on her toes, groping for his mouth with her lips. The kiss gentled him, and he tangled his fists in her hair while she set about the task of unbuttoning his shirt and unzipping his jeans. His kiss was deep, his tongue scraping against the roof of her mouth and sliding against her teeth. He broke it to bend down and step out of his pants and shrug the shirt from his shoulders. He pressed his face against the front of her knickers and wrapped his arms around her thighs. His breath was hot through the fabric, and his nose rubbed against her clit. A sharp breath caught in her throat and she moaned. She opened her legs a bit, tilting her pelvis against his face, resting her hands on the top of his head for support. He peeled her knickers down with his thumbs and when they slid past his mouth he stuck his tongue out and laved along her slit, and then nipped at her clit with his teeth. A jolt shot down her spine, neither pleasure nor pain but something like both.

He leaned back on his heels and smiled at her, and she crawled onto the bed and lay down. He joined her a moment later, rolling on top of her and propping himself between her legs. He held her gaze as he reached between them, positioned himself and thrust inside. And he continued to stare at her with a mixture of greed and tenderness as he rocked against her, digging his public bone against her. She felt the pressure building, and her eyes fluttered closed, but he coaxed them back open with a whispered, “Look at me.”

Her throat caught just as she tipped over and broke apart, and she felt tears collecting at the corners of her eyes. She held his gaze as she ebbed and flowed, as she murmured his name and he began to thrust more quickly against her. She held his gaze as his face began to contort and she rested her palm flat against his neck, over the sinews and scars and tattoo. He grunted three, four, five times in quick succession and collapsed on top of her, burying his face in her hair and panting against her ear.

“Never leave me,” she thought she heard him whisper. A memory came back to her, one of looking over her shoulder at his sallow face while she wiped her blood-stained palms on her tattered jeans.

“Never again,” she agreed, shifting so that she was cuddled against him and he curved around her like a comma.

Maybe it was the sort of promise no one could be expected to keep, but it was still a sort of oath. And she meant it.


	4. Final Revision

She tapped her quill against the parchment. He’d stopped talking a moment ago, so she glanced up at him. He was staring at her with a queer expression. “Go on. We were at the Quidditch match in fifty-eight, the one where Peeves – oh, Severus, please stop it. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Fine, I won’t look at you.”

“Must you make this harder than it already is?” She wanted to throw something at him, have him catch it and toss it aside and then wrap his arms around her. Words weren’t the same. She bit her lip.

His face softened a little. “Do you know what Longbottom thinks we do in here all day?”

She nodded. “He thinks we talk. He knows you’re helping with this revision.”

“He thinks I’m comforting you. But all we do all day is talk about Hogwarts. I’m sick to death of the fucking castle.”

She choked a little. “Do you think I wouldn’t crawl in there if I could? It’s not my fault that you went and left me.”

That was cruel. He hadn’t meant to, after all. He’d been as sorry to leave as she’d been to see him go.

He froze, and then he shook his head, as if he was disgusted with himself. She knew that gesture. She got up and shuffled over to the portrait, stretching her hand out and holding her palm flat against the surface. It was just a painting after all, but the age difference between them was so jarring. Her hand was wrinkled and spotted and her fingers were thin, but his was young. There were already scars there, as there would be on any thirty-eight year old man who’d lived on the edge of the abyss, but it was so fresh compared to hers. This had never been the man she’d loved; he’d never been that young when she loved him.

She remembered this man. He’d been too distant and scarred to ever have curled around her in his sleep, or snapped a flannel in the kitchen when her chatter finally drove him over the wall.

This wasn’t the man who’d held her and rocked her through the endless miscarriages and the trips to St. Mungo’s where they analyzed the extent of the scars Bellatrix had left on her. This wasn’t the man who’d dawdled little Albus Severus on his knee all while proclaiming that he hated the name to everyone within earshot.

It was just canvas, after all, this thing beneath her palm. It didn’t thrum with existence or hum with life. She’d never loved him, except that in retrospect she did. In retrospect she loved him through all of his permutations, even the ones where she hadn’t been at his side or alive. She loved the boy under the tree in a bottle of memories and the portrait that would outlast her last breath by a thousand years. She pressed her lips to the canvas, sliding her wrinkled cheek against the brushstrokes. “Don’t forget, I still have your heart.”

She rocked back, and smiled at him. He looked serious – sad. “I don’t know where yours went.”

“It’s all right. I’ll catch up with him eventually, wherever he is.”

“Be sure that you do, Miss Granger.”

Miss Granger. And she was a hundred and six, and Neville was a dotty old man with a beard who wore lavender robes, even if he was five times the headmaster Dumbledore had ever been. He and Charlie hadn’t seemed a likely pair, but they’d turned the castle into a sort of fairyland, lush with beautiful plants and strange creatures and magic and kindness and hope. Severus called it tacky, but it was tacky in the best way. “Now, you promised. This thing will be completely up to date on the day that I die, whenever it comes. Peeves.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine, yes, Peeves was wholly responsible for the riot in the west stands, and that’s why Longbottom called in the exorcist.”

“See, you can focus on these things now. You couldn’t have cared less about them when you were still alive.”

“I had better things to do when I was still alive. Such as you.”

“Poor you.”

“Yes, poor me. Someday you’ll not come back and then I’ll have no one to talk to but Minerva and Longbottom and whatever dunderhead is currently lording it over in the big chair.”

“Right. And this book is our legacy. That’s why it should be up to date.”

“Someone else will come along some day, do another revision. Interpret things differently, twist it all around. You realize that, don’t you?”

She pursed her lips. “Of course I do. God only knows what they’ll say about the fact that you married me.”

“They’ll say I was the luckiest bastard to ever sit in that stupid chair.”

“We were both lucky. I miss you, but I’m glad you’re still here.”

“That makes it all worth it, being trapped in this fucking portrait. The most I ever did for you was outlive you.”

She smiled up at him. “But that is much.”


End file.
